Practical articles and regulatory updates written by engineers who work in the same environments you manage. No filler. No generic safety advice. Content that is relevant to the decisions you make and the standards you are held to.
IEC 61511 defines the requirements for safety instrumented systems in the process industry. For plant managers in South Africa, understanding what the standard requires — and what it means for your facility's safety lifecycle — is no longer optional. This article breaks down the key requirements in plain language.
Hazardous area classification determines where explosive atmospheres may exist in your facility and what equipment protection levels are required. This guide covers the classification process, the applicable standards, and what plant managers and HSE teams need to understand before commissioning a HAC study.
False alarms in optical flame detection systems are one of the most disruptive and costly problems in industrial fire protection. This article identifies the five most common causes, explains the engineering principles behind each, and outlines the corrective actions that will reduce nuisance trips without compromising detection performance.
These two studies come up together constantly in process safety conversations, and they often get conflated. A plant manager who has sat through both can usually describe what happened in the room. What's less common is a clear understanding of why they're different studies, why the sequence matters, and what each one actually produces.
There's a version of commissioning that most people have seen: a technician walks around with a clipboard, presses a test button on a detector, the panel beeps, and someone signs off a form. That's not commissioning. That's a functional check, and it is not enough to know whether a fire and gas system will actually perform when it's needed.
Take our interactive Facility Risk Assessment to instantly identify gaps in your safety documentation, functional safety measures, and fire & gas audit history. Get a free, personalised risk report in minutes.
Most technical content published online is written by marketers summarising information they found elsewhere. The articles on this page are written by practising engineers at Touch Teq who work daily in refineries, chemical plants, mines, and processing facilities across Southern Africa.
We publish on topics that are directly relevant to the work we do and the challenges our clients face. If an article appears here, it is because we have direct experience with the subject matter and something useful to say about it.
We do not publish on a fixed schedule. We publish when we have something worth reading.
We publish new technical articles and regulatory updates periodically. If you want to be notified when new content is available, leave your email address below. No newsletters. No marketing emails. Only a notification when a new article is published.
If there is a topic you would like us to address — a standard you are trying to understand, a compliance question, or a technical challenge you are facing — contact us directly. We are happy to point you in the right direction, and your question may become the subject of a future article.