IEC 61508
Functional Safety

IEC Standards+ training courses

Training sessions were led by
Ron Bell, one of the
experts who
helped write IEC 61508
The IEC set up its first Standards+ courses on Functional Safety in 2009 to provide participants with additional training on the fundamentals of the IEC 61508 series of standards which includes several key elements: the management of Functional Safety; the technical requirements for the systems engineering, the hardware and the software; the competence of persons (currently informative but will become normative); and the assessment of Functional Safety.
IEC 61508, Functional safety of electrical, electronic and programmable electronic (E/E/PE) safety-related systems, is a voluminous and complex IEC International Standard. It is difficult to apply it correctly without guidance and training on the fundamentals.
What are the courses about?
The IEC Standards+ training courses were backed by the IEC and the experts of IEC SC (Subcommittee) 65A: Industrial-process measurement, control and automation - Systems aspects, who participated in the development of IEC 61508.
They provided participants with an understanding of:
- Key aspects of IEC 61508 and its relationship with the other publications in the IEC 61508 series
- Essentials of functional safety in the context of complex electronic systems
- Risk-based approaches to the development of the safety requirements specification
- The key compliance areas of:
- Management of functional safety
- Technical requirements for the systems, hardware and software
- Competence of persons (currently informative but will become normative)
- Functional safety assessment
