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Process Equipment Reliability Database (PERD)

PERD, the Process Equipment Reliability Database, is a Center for Chemical Process Safety (CCPS) initiative that collects field reliability and failure data on process equipment for the chemical and hydrocarbon processing industries. It is an industry data source built to the ISO 14224 reliability-data standard, the same backbone OREDA uses. CCPS began this effort in the late 1980s and published the first Guidelines for Process Equipment Reliability Data in 1989, and PERD grew out of it as the living, member-fed database meant to give deeper, plant-grounded numbers than a static table can.

For functional safety work, PERD matters as a source of failure rate data for equipment that has no SIL certificate, which is most utility and support-system hardware. We at SIL Safe think of it as a prior-use input. Field data like PERD or OREDA can support a prior-use justification under IEC 61511 and can feed PFDavg calculations, once you split the raw rates into dangerous and safe, detected and undetected fractions. One practical note, the standalone PERD software was phased out as a CCPS product and is now managed by Tony Ciliberti at Reliability Dynamics, so access today looks different than the older CCPS tool.

Key Points

  • An industry reliability data source built to ISO 14224, not a term defined in IEC 61511.
  • Useful for failure rates on non-certified equipment, especially utilities and support systems where device libraries are thin.
  • Field data like PERD can support a prior use justification and feed PFDavg, after splitting rates into dangerous or safe and detected or undetected fractions.
  • Originated at CCPS, but the standalone software is now managed by Reliability Dynamics (Tony Ciliberti).

Example

A facility wants to use an existing instrument-air solenoid in a SIF but has no SIL certificate for it. The functional safety engineer pulls a generic failure rate for that solenoid type from a field database such as PERD, cross-checks it against site history, and carries it into the PFDavg calculation as prior-use data.

See Also: OREDA, PDS, prior use, failure rate

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