Overview

Corporate standards and guidelines provide directions and uniformity for the engineering, installation, and maintenance of process control systems within corporations. Such standards and guidelines will be referred to as "standards" in this appendix.

Corporate standards ensure a more efficient use of manpower and resources, as well as higher quality in the production of engineering, installation, and maintenance work. With today's trend toward reduced engineering and maintenance staff, corporate standards are an excellent vehicle for explaining to outside consultants, contractors, and suppliers the way a corporation does things and how it wants the activities to be performed from design to maintenance. They provide knowledge to the corporation based on the experience of its experts.

Standards are most often developed by skilled users, based on proven experience and performance. Standards should be sufficiently flexible to allow creativity and functionality, but they should ensure conformance to local regulations and specific corporate needs, so as to reduce cost and errors. The question of balancing "lowest possible cost" with quality and functionality is in many cases left to the discretion of the users.

To be of ongoing value, corporate standards should not be static; they should be reviewed continuously and upgraded as necessary. Many organizations prefer to have their corporate standards on paper, such as in a dedicated binder; others prefer electronic media. In many cases, a combination of the two is used.

Corporate standards should not duplicate existing codes, guidelines, or standards available in industry and with which the plant would comply (e.g.,...