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Michel Houtermans
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Monday 24 July 2006 9:02:46 am
Re: Legal status IEC 61508/61511
IEC 61508 is common practice within the EU. In the EU, and applicable to the process companies, the SEVESO II, the ATEX, and the Machinery directive are the law. These laws require for example safety management, hazard and risk analysis and appropriate safety solutions and training of people. IEC 61508, 61511, 62061 are practical standards to implement the law.
61508 is also an EN norm rectified by CENELEC. In my view CENELEC members are bound to implement EN norms.
IEC 62061 is a machinery standard which falls under IEC 61508 and which is harmonized and thus the law. In other words you cannot ignore it. In the oil&gas industry there are plenty of applications that require IEC 62061.
Now what does the EU themselves say about norms. Here is an abstract of a guiding document for the machinery industry. Bottom line, standards are always voluntary, unless...
"Voluntary nature of standards
The general principle clearly stated in Community law and in particular by the Resolution of 7 May 198533 and the “new-approach” Directives is that technical standards are always applied voluntarily. Failure to comply with them is never in itself a fault, because any fault implies a prior obligation. Compliance with harmonized standards implies “presumption of conformity” to the regulations. Since compliance with the standard is voluntary, it is a “praiseworthy” act on the part of the manufacturer. The inspection authorities take account of it in their policy of monitoring the market. Even so, non-compliance with a standard never necessarily means that the product does not conform to regulations. The manufacturer remains free not to follow the standard. It is important to stress that the standard is not infallible. Standards are drafted with all the limitations of any documents which are subject to long negotiations and compromises.
Cases where the standard is mandatory
Standards are mandatory in only three cases:
- The standard is imposed by regulation. With a few exceptions, this is not the case of the “new approach” Directives. Within this framework, the provisions of the standard become full regulatory provisions.
- The standard is incorporated into a private or public contract. Compliance with the standard then becomes a contractual obligation which, like any undertaking of that nature, is freely negotiable.
- The standard codifies “good engineering practice”. Contrary to popular opinion this happens very rarely. It is not the standard which is mandatory, but rather the rules of good practice. A standard cannot claim always to reflect good engineering practice. It must really be an incontestable expression of actual professional practice widespread in the trade concerned."
In other words, eventhough 61508/61511 are not called for by law you could certainly say they are good engineering practice and even better, many contracts made by end-users and system integrators and engineering contractors state that the project needs to comply with these standards. Thus there are very strong reasons where these standards have a very strong legal status.
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Domokos Krantz
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Monday 11 September 2006 10:07:49 pm
Re: Legal status IEC 61508/61511
It is a fact that EN standards must be implemented by all CENELEC members within the set deadlines, and in deed members of this standard series are implemented Hungarian standards as well. However this obligation only extends to the national standards body and not to manufacturers or companies.
The application or use of any European standard is voluntary by nature, thus meaning that the company CAN choose the standrd option, but is not obliged to. Usually standards are the easiest way to show conformity, however if a non standard method is chosen, this is also possible, but usually it is more expensive and more difficult to do. This is so that standards are not blocking innovation to a great extent.
D Krantz
Permranent Representative to
CEN CA & BT and CENELEC BT
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