Legislation, Standards and Technology

Certified Ex-competence
The new IECEx Scheme for Certification of Personnel Competencies
by Thorsten Arnhold

IECEx Cert Persons Scheme Overview

Person prepares IECEx Certificate

application

IECEx Testing of
knowledge
Certification
Body (ExCB) Assessment
of experience
Surveillance
Re-assessment

By ExCB

Certified Person

Figure 1: IECEx Certification of Personnel Competencies (overview)

Ensuring the safety of process plants in order
to protect the health and lives of the people
working there is a primary concern for oper-
ating companies of such plants, and of the
respective public regulatory and surveillance
authorities. For economic success, users are
still interested in processes that work relia-
bly, with a minimum of interference. The cor-
rect selection of suitable equipment plays an
important role in fulfilling these requirements,
as well as their safe and reliable operation
during the complete service life of the plant,
and the correct handling and operation by
qualified and experienced personnel. In the
process industry, where large amounts of
flammable liquids and combustible dusts are
handled every day, explosion protection
plays an important role in the complete safe-
ty concept.
In the course of the international harmoni-
zation of standard and certification activities,
the worldwide certification system IECEx
Scheme was established in the mid-nineties.
After the usual start up pangs, the organiza-
tion, whicj\h initially only planned to certify
the conformity of the design and quality of
explosion-protected equipment with the re-
quirements of the respective IEC-standards,
developed quickly and steadily. After having
achieved worldwide acceptance in 2004, the
scheme was expanded by the certification of
special maintenance and repair services and
achieved considerable success. The IECEx
Service Facility Scheme, which was started
in 2007, now comprises 57 certified repair
shops. This development is based on the idea
that for the safety of a plant, with an expect-
ed service life of ca. 35 years, it is not enough

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to only certify new products and to supervise
their correct production, but the products
should also be expertly examined, main-
tained and repaired during the operation pe-
riod as well. And as operating companies do
not want to maintain the required speciality
workshop, they have to be able to rely on
qualified specialized workshops. Logically,
this then leads to the next step: The safety in
the plants and the correct accomplishment of
repair work in (certified) workshops depends
on the qualification and experience of the
employees that work there. So the IECEx or-
ganization suggested, after the successful
introduction of the IECEx Service Facility
Scheme, the introduction of another scheme
for the certification of specialized personnel.
During the annual meeting of the Manage-
ment Committee (MC) of IECEx in 2008 in
Denver, the go ahead signal was given for
the working group in charge; in 2009 the first
drafts for the working documents were avail-
able at the meeting in Melbourne and at the
meeting in Berlin in 2010 the new scheme
was released.
Structure of the IECEx Scheme for Certifica-
tion of Personnel Competencies
The IECEx Scheme for Certification of Per-
sonnel Competencies for Explosive Atmos-
pheres is described in 5 basic documents,
which the interested reader can download
from the IECEx-homepage (www.iecex.com)
free of charge.
IECEx 05: Rules of Procedures is the basic
document that describes the new scheme
clearly and makes the connection to the su-
perordinate IECEx-system.
Operation Document OD 501 regulates ap-
proval procedure and prerequisites for test-
ing institutions to become certification bod-
ies under the new IECEx Scheme.
OD 502 describes the information and
documents an applicant has to submit to the
certification body if he applies for certifica-
tion of his personal competences.
OD 503 comprises all procedures and reg-
ulations that a certification body has to ob-
serve and keep during the certification pro-
cedure.
For interested experts who want to be certi-
fied, OD 504 surely is most interesting: in this
document the so-called units of competence
are defined for which the certification of the
personal professional qualifications can be
requested. In Table 1 these units of compe-
tence are displayed clearly. With this struc-
ture it is taken into account that only a limited
number of employees know about all fields of
explosion protection and thus specialist
knowledge has to be reflected as well. This
specialization on the one hand refers to the
activities content determined in the units of
competence, but may also be limited to indi-
vidual types of protection and zones. For ex-
ample, it is possible to get a certificate for
the competence of installing intrinsically safe
circuits in Zone 2. These scopes of applica-
tion of the certificates are then described in
detail in the personal documents like the
identification card or entry in the IECEx-data-
base.

Unit Ex 001 Basic principles of protection in explosive atmospheres

Unit Ex 002 Perform classification of hazardous areas
Unit Ex 003 Install explosion-protected equipment and wiring systems
Unit Ex 004 Maintain equipment in explosive atmospheres
Unit Ex 005 Overhaul and repair of explosion-protected equipment
Unit Ex 006 Test electrical installations
Unit Ex 007 Perform visual & close inspection
Unit Ex 008 Perform detailed inspection
Unit Ex 009 Design electrical installations
Unit Ex 010 Perform audit inspection of installations

Table 1: Units of Competence

Ex-Magazine 2011 | Page 29

Certified Ex-competence
In the above mentioned example, the em-
ployee would be certified according to unit of
competence 03. In OD 504 the scope of work
and the requirements for the issuing of a cer-
tificate are described in detail. In regard to
scope of work it says that the applicant has
to be able to select the electrical equipment
that is suitable for the application, to do the
work safely and exactly, to know and to apply
the relevant installation standards (especially
IEC 60079-14) and he has to be able to do the
required documentation of the work.
The prerequisite is adequate professional
technical training such as a degree from
polytechnic college and at least three years
of professional experience in electrical in-
stallation technology. Furthermore, per unit
the critical work contents are described to
which special attention should be paid during
the examination.
After a review of the documents the com-
petence of the applicant is evaluated by the
testing body according to OD 503. This has to
be done under conditions that are in line with
practice and under the supervision of an as-
sessor from the certification body. Evaluation
of the required knowledge can be done by:
> written or oral tests
> practical tests
> interviews
Furthermore, the assessor should get an idea
of the competent workmanship of the appli-
cant. This can be done at the applicants
workplace or in a test workshop.
Figure 1 shows a survey of the complete
procedure. The certificates have to be con-
firmed every 18 months and renewed every 3
years.
Page 30 | Ex-Magazine 2011
The IECEx Scheme consist of
IECEx Certified Equipment Scheme
37 IECEx certification bodies (IECEx CB)
42 IECEx test laboraties (IECEx TL)
Certified Service Facilities Scheme
9 IECEx certification bodies
IECEx Conformity Mark License System
11 Approved License issuing ExCBs
IECEx Certified Persons Scheme
2 IECEx certification bodies
Table 2: The IECEx System with its individual content
Pure certificate costs for new certificates
amount to 250 Swiss francs and for renewal
of certificates they amount to 200 Swiss
francs.
Every certified person receives an identi-
fication card showing the period of validity
and the certified Units of Competence. At the
same time, an entry into the online-certifica-
tion database is made. This allows certified
experts for hazardous areas to be easily
identified all over the world.
Conclusion
If you look at Table 2, you can see that 37
Certification Bodies and 42 Test Laboratories
of the Certified Equipment Scheme now exist
and almost 16,000 such certificates are have
been issued. A similar development seems
to be occurring with the IECEx Service facili-
ty scheme. Here, after three years already 57
repair shops are certified.
It may be assumed that the new IECEx
Personnel Competency Scheme will make a
very positive development as well. In particu-
lar, the dramatic events that took place in the
Gulf of Mexico and in the nuclear power
plant in Fukushima show clearly how much
the safety of plants depends on the compe-
tence and experience of the employees. An
impartial and professional evaluation of this
competence makes the work of plant opera-
tors significantly easier when selecting the
right personnel.