In this 45-minute session, I look at how to do a Preliminary Hazard Analysis with Mil-Std-882E. Preliminary Hazard Analysis, or PHA, is Task 202 in the Standard.
I explore Task 202’s aim, description, scope, and contracting requirements. There’s value-adding commentary, and I explain the issues with PHA – how to do it well and avoid the pitfalls.
Now, I have worked in System Safety since 1996, and I think that PHA is one of the three tasks that EVERY project needs to do. The other two are:
- Preliminary Hazard Identification (PHI, Task 201); and
- System Requirements Hazard Analysis (SRHA, Task 203).
I look at these three tasks together in my course ‘Foundations of Safety Assessment’. This is one of five linked courses on Mil-Std-882E. They will teach you how to get the maximum benefits from your System Safety Program.
Topics: How to do Preliminary Hazard Analysis
- Task 202 Purpose;
- Task Description;
- Recording & Scope;
- Risk Assessment (Tables I, II & III);
- Risk Mitigation (order of preference);
- Contracting; and
- Commentary.
Transcript: How to do Preliminary Hazard Analysis
Hello and welcome to the Safety Artisan, where you’ll find professional, pragmatic, and impartial safety training resources. So, we’ll get straight on to our session, which is on the 8th of February 2020.
Preliminary Hazard Analysis
Now we’re going to talk today about Preliminary Hazard Analysis (PHA). This is Task 202 in Military Standard 882E, which is a system safety engineering standard. It’s very widely used mostly on military equipment, but it does turn up elsewhere. This standard is of wide interest to people and Task 202 is the second of the analysis tasks. It’s one of the first things that you will do on a systems safety program and therefore one of the most informative. This session forms part of a series of lessons that I’m doing on Mil-Std-882E.
Topics for This Session
What are we going to cover in this session? Quite a lot! The purpose of the task, a task description, recording, and scope. How we do risk assessments against Tables 1, 2, and 3. These tables describe severities, likelihoods, and the overall risk matrix. We will talk about all three, about risk mitigation and using the order of preference for risk mitigation, a little bit of contracting, and then a short commentary from myself. I’m providing commentary all the way through. So, let’s crack on.
Task 202 Purpose
The purpose of Task 202, as it says, is to perform and document a preliminary hazard analysis, or PHA for short, to identify hazards, assess the initial risks, and identify potential mitigation measures. We’re going to talk about all of that.
Task Description
First, the task description is quite long here. And as you can see, I’ve highlighted some stuff that I particularly want to talk about.
It says “the contractor” [does this or that], but it doesn’t matter who is doing the analysis, and, the customer needs to do something to inform themselves, otherwise they won’t understand what they’re doing. Whoever does it needs to perform and document a PHA. It’s about determining initial risk assessments. There’s going to be more work, more detailed work done later. But for now, we’re doing an initial risk assessment of identified hazards. And those hazards will be associated with the design or the functions we propose to introduce. That’s very important. We don’t need a design to do this. We can get in early when we have user requirements, functional requirements, and that kind of thing.
Doing this work will help us make better requirements for the system. So, we need to evaluate those hazards for severity and probability. It says based on the best available data. And of course, early in a program, that’s another big issue. We’ll talk about that more later. It says to include mishap data as well, if accessible: American term mishap, means an accident, but we’re avoiding any kind of suggestion about whether it is accidental or deliberate. It might be stupidity, deliberate, or whatever. It’s a mishap. It’s an undesirable event.
We look for accessible data from similar systems, legacy systems, and other lessons learned. I’ve talked about that a little bit in the Task 201 lesson, and there’s more on that today under commentary. We need to look at provisions, and alternatives, meaning design provisions and design alternatives to reduce risks and add mitigation measures to eliminate hazards. If we can all reduce associated risk, we need to include all of that. What’s the task description? That’s a good overview of the task and what we need to talk about.
Reading & Scope
First, recording and scope, as always, with these tasks, we’ve got to document the results of the PHA in a hazard tracking system. Now, a word on terminology; we might call a hazard tracking system; we might call it a hazard log; we might call it a risk register. It doesn’t matter what it’s called. The key point is it’s a tracking system. It’s a live document, as people say, it’s a spreadsheet or a database, something like that. It’s something relatively easy to update and change.
Also, we can track changes through the safety program once we do more analysis because things will change. We should expect to get some results and refine them and change them as time goes on. Very important point.
That’s it for the Demo…
End: How to do Preliminary Hazard Analysis

Learn safety engineering with me, an industry professional with 25 years of experience, I have:
•Worked on aircraft, ships, submarines, ATMS, trains, and software;
•Tiny programs to some of the biggest (Eurofighter, Future Submarine);
•In the UK and Australia, on US and European programs;
•Taught safety to hundreds of people in the classroom, and thousands online;
•Presented on safety topics at several international conferences.
You can find a free pdf of the System Safety Engineering Standard, Mil-Std-882E, here.
3 replies on “How to do Preliminary Hazard Analysis with Mil-Std-882E”
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A practical approach to hazard analysis! This step-by-step guide makes complex safety processes more accessible and highlights key considerations. Essential read for safety professionals and project managers!