Safer together: exida purchases partner

-- Control Engineering, 3/4/2008

Sellersville, PA – exida.com LLC, a privately held consulting and certification company serving the process safety community, has purchased Asset Integrity Management (AIM) of Aberdeen, Scotland, UK. Purchase price was not mentioned.

According to Dr. William Goble, exida’s principal partner, “AIM and exida have been working under a mutually beneficial licensing agreement for quite some time. During that time we have demonstrated to our clients and ourselves how much the strengths of AIM’s SILSuite complement the strengths of exida’s exSILentia product offering. However, we each came to the realization that in order to deliver end users a more tightly integrated software solution, one that is designed to encompass the IEC 61508 and IEC 61511 safety standards life-cycle model, we needed to become one company.”

The use of software tools to efficiently apply phases of the IEC safety standards life-cycle model has been reviewed among users, consultants, and suppliers for several years. Most commercially available safety system software tools are developed to address a portion of the safety life-cycle model. Although they generally support import/export capabilities, the differing database toxicology of each application often results in significant pre-import data manipulation as data-sets are passed across applications. Some suppliers, including AIM and exida, have developed suites of software applications, but even these don’t cover all aspects of the model.

Goble says exida is committed to support existing AIM and exida products while it engages in takes the best of both to combine into a robust, tightly integrated software suite that targets all phases of the safety system life-cycle model. He adds, “Once we have completed the integration of SILSuite and exSILentia, we have already begun formulating plans for additional modules. Our goal is to produce a software suite that ensures accuracy and promotes consistency while lessening the user’s burden of conforming to IEC standards.”

Chevron’s Dennis Zetterberg, who uses AIM and exida products, said, “We have worked with both SILSuite and exSILentia and agree that a software solution that combines the strengths of both of these would help us reduce costs by streamlining the various phases of the safety lifecycle as well as achieve consistency in our Safety Instrumented System design, implementation, operation, testing, and maintenance throughout our global facilities.”

AIM’s SILSuite software is a widely adopted, comprehensive set of software tools that addresses several phases of the safety life-cycle. It is used by many global refining and chemical companies, including BP, British Gas (HRL), Occidental, and Texaco North Sea.

exida’s exSILentia software is an integrated safety lifecycle tool set that has been widely adopted in North America and Asia and is used by many global refining and chemical companies, including Atomic Energy of Canada, Chevron, and Dow Chemical. SILSuite modules include SILAlarm, SILHazop, SILClass, SILCalc, SILLopa, and SILLife. Available as an online application, exSILentia includes SILect, SRS, and SILver.

– Control Engineering News Desk
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