Saturday 8 March 2008

Documentation Standards

There is a new standard, ANSI/ISA-5.06.01-2007 Functional Requirements Documentation for Control Software Applications.
It reminded me of an older one from Norsok, that I came across while researching control systems diagrams. I would be very interested to hear from people who are actually using this standard.

I am of course very interested in such standards, as much as I am in S88, because this is my livelyhood, as well as an abiding interest. I look at these standards to see if they have any bright ideas, such as new diagram types or models that might be added to ControlDraw.



I-005 System Control Diagram, (Rev 2 2005) - includes:


Present extensive use of computerised systems and 3D modeling provide efficient tools for specifying and handling of physical equipment in a standardised manner. However, the development of methods and tools to specify functional relationships has not reached a corresponding level.
During the plant development the process engineers specify the process through the development of the P&IDs. Throughout this work process the process engineers acquire a thorough understanding of the total plant behavior. However, the P&IDs provide limited facilities for documentation of the overall functionality as well as operational aspects of the plant.


The SCD approach has been developed with a view to industrial processes controlled by state-of-the-art process control systems, but as it provides a general process oriented approach for development of thedocuments, no field of application are explicitly excluded.

It says a lot more (Search like this)



And the ISA standard (also known as S5.6) says

Learning and configuring today's control software packages is easier than ever before. Documentation, however, is not such an easy task. With the increased capabilities of software packages to handle more process and operator interfaces, the complexity of defining and documenting these requirements increases. This standard directly addresses this documentation issue.


I have no idea whether the ISA looked at the Norsok standard when they were developing S5.6, I wish they had though. It even covers much of what S88 Part 5 is aspiring to, such as Modes and States (in some depth and with precise meanings and State Charts, templates.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I have just discovered your blogg here on my surch for standards that can be compared to Norsok I-005. Norsok I-005 is widely used by Statoilhydro in their offshore project for the last 13 years.
I am chairman of the expertgroup that maintain this MORSOK standard. And we plan to soon issue rev.3 of it. Rev.3 will mainly consits of adding some new functions blocks and correct all typing errors and bad language in the standard.
In paralell we are planning to approach IEC with it as long as we do not find any other standard that fill's it function.

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