ATEX Instrument Selection & Installation SOP
An ATEX instrument selection and installation SOP for classified hazardous areas: zone classification, a hard ATEX marking-verification gate, technical review, hazardous-area installation requirements, inspection and commissioning.
How it works
Replace the lanes with your actual hazardous-area roles
This chart uses Field Service, Engineering, ATEX Safety, QA and Commissioning. If a separate person independently signs off the certification gate from the person who performs the installation, split ATEX Safety into two lanes rather than folding the check into whoever happens to be on site.
Put your own marking-to-zone mapping on the certification gate
"ATEX marking matches zone, gas group and temperature class?" needs the actual protection type, gas or dust group and temperature class your zones require, not just "checked against the nameplate". Write the accepted marking directly into the row's comment field so the person verifying it isn't relying on memory.
Name who has the authority to call a reject
The certification decision is the one branch in this chart that cannot be overridden by schedule pressure. Attach a named role to "ATEX marking matches zone, gas group and temperature class?" so there's no ambiguity about who can send equipment back to procurement instead of letting it go into the ground.
Set People and Workload on every row before you rely on the BI panel
The workload panel can only total hours for rows that carry them. Fill in People and Workload for each step as you adapt the chart, using realistic effort hours rather than elapsed time, so a week with two hazardous-area jobs actually shows up as a busy week for the right specialist.
Decide what counts as an inspection fail
"Installation passes ATEX inspection?" is only useful if the inspector and the installing technician agree in advance on what triggers the Fail branch, an undersized gland, a missing bonding conductor, a barrier omitted from an intrinsically safe loop. List examples directly in "Rework installation to correct inspection findings" so the checklist isn't interpreted differently by whoever happens to be on duty.
Frequently asked questions
What triggers the start of the ATEX instrument installation process?
The process starts at "Installation request received for a classified hazardous area": an instrument is going into a zone where a flammable gas or combustible dust atmosphere can be present. That single fact is what pulls in every check that follows, and it is why the chart determines the zone before it defines a single process requirement.
What happens if the instrument's ATEX marking doesn't match the zone?
The "ATEX marking matches zone, gas group and temperature class?" decision routes a mismatch straight to "Reject non-conforming equipment, request a correctly certified unit", and the replacement goes back through certification verification once it arrives. There is no risk-accepted workaround: a marking that doesn't cover the zone is a hard stop regardless of schedule pressure.
Who has the authority to reject non-conforming equipment?
In this chart the certification gate sits with the ATEX Safety role, Oscar Lindqvist, not with whoever happens to be installing the instrument that day. Naming that authority explicitly is what keeps a technician under schedule pressure from making a call that belongs to the safety specialist.
Why does a failed inspection loop back instead of being logged as a noted exception?
"Installation passes ATEX inspection?" routes a Fail to "Rework installation to correct inspection findings" and back through inspection again, the same pattern as the certification gate. Cable glands, earthing and routing that look acceptable to an untrained eye can still be wrong for the zone, so the chart treats a fail the same way it treats a marking mismatch: fixed and re-checked, not noted and carried forward.
How is this different from Insatech's ordinary Process Instrument Installation & Commissioning SOP?
The ordinary SOP covers a specified instrument going into a customer's plant under standard practice. This one exists specifically for classified hazardous areas, and it adds two things the ordinary SOP doesn't have: the zone-classification step at the very start, and the ATEX marking-verification gate before installation even begins. Use this SOP whenever the installation site is a classified zone; use the ordinary one everywhere else.