How often should a Functional Safety Audit be carried out?

Functional Safety Audits confirm that an organisations procedures are compliant with the requirements of the standard and that they are being correctly followed.

Good practice would be to carry out an FS Audit perhaps once every 3 years (as you might do for an ISO 9001 audit, for example).

In many ways FS Audit is similar to the Functional Safety Assessment (FSA) – in that both are considering compliance with IEC 61511. The difference is that FA Audit has more focus on procedures, whereas FSA focus on projects and the delivery of Operation and Maintenance activities on a day-to-day basis. The CASS and =Method checklists used for FSA are also used to carry out Functional Safety Audit, and the competency requirements are the same as those for FSA.

=Method allows FSA and Audit to be carried out by the same person.

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Technical author

Dil Wetherill

CEO - Method Safety and Security

Dil launched Method Functional Safety in 2013. He now delivers training courses and provide consultancy on all aspects of functional safety.

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