In this full-length session, I look at Operating & Support Hazard Analysis, or O&SHA, which is Task 206 in Mil-Std-882E. I explore Task 206’s aim, description, scope, and contracting requirements.
There’s value-adding commentary, which explains O&SHA: how to use it with other tasks; how to apply it effectively on different products; and some of the pitfalls to avoid. This is based on my 25 years in system safety and my background in operations and maintenance.
I also refer to other lessons for specific tools and techniques, such as Human Factors analysis methods.
Operating & Support Hazard Analysis: Topics
- Task 206 Purpose:
- To identify and assess hazards introduced by O&S activities and procedures;
- To evaluate the adequacy of O&S procedures, facilities, processes, and equipment used to mitigate risks associated with identified hazards.
- Task Description (six slides);
- Reporting (two slides);
- Contracting (two slides); and
- Commentary (four slides).
Operating & Support Hazard Analysis: Transcript
Introduction
Hello everyone and welcome to the Safety Artisan; home of safety engineering training. I’m Simon and today we’re going to be carrying on with our series on Mil. Standard 882E system safety engineering.
Operating & Support Hazard Analysis
Today, we’re going to be moving on to the subject of operating and support hazard analysis. This is, as it says, task 206 under the standard. Operating and support hazard analysis, I’ll just call it O&S or OSHA (also O&SHA) for short. Unfortunately, that will confuse people if I call OSHA. Let’s call it O&S.
Topics for this Session
The purpose of O&S hazard analysis is to identify and assess hazards introduced by those activities and procedures and to evaluate the adequacy of O&S procedures, processes, equipment, facilities, etc, to mitigate risks that have been already identified. A twofold task but a very big task. And as we’ll see, we’ve got lots of slides today on task description, and reporting, contracting, and commentary. As always, I present the full text as is of the task, which is copyright free, but I’m only going to talk about the things that are important. So, we’re not going to go through every little clause of the standard that would be pointless.
O&S Hazard Analysis (T206)
Let’s get started with the purpose. As we’ve already said, it’s to identify and assess those hazards which are introduced by operational and support activities and procedures and evaluate their adequacy. So, we’re looking at operating the system, whatever it may be- And of course, this is a military standard, so we assume a military system, but not all military systems are weapon systems by any means. Not all are physical systems.
There may be inventory management systems, management information systems, all kinds of stuff. So, does operating those systems and just supporting them, maintaining them are resupplying them, disposing of them, etc – Does that create any hazards or introduce any hazards? And how do we mitigate? That’s the purpose of the task.
Task Description (T206) #1
Let’s move on to the task description. Again, we’re assuming a contractor is performing the analysis, but that’s not necessarily the case. For this task, this actually says this typically begins during engineering and manufacturing development, or EMD. So, we’re assuming an American style lifecycle for a big system and EMD comes after concept and requirements development. So, we are beginning to move into the very expensive stage of development for a system where we begin to commit serious money.
It’s suggesting that O&SHA can wait until then which is fine in general unless you’ve identified any particularly novel hazards that will need to be dealt with earlier on. As it says, it should build on design hazard analyses, but we’ll also talk about the case later on when there is no design hazard analyses. And the O&SHA shall identify requirements or alternatives or eliminating hazards, mitigating risks, etc. This is one of those tasks where the human is very important – In fact, dominant to be honest. Both as a source of hazards and the potential victim of the associated risks. A lot of human-centric stuff going on here.
Task Description (T206) #2
As always, we’re going to think about the system configurations. We’re going to think about what we’re going to do with the system and the environment that we’re going to do it in. So, a familiar triad and I know I keep banging on about this, but this really is fundamental to bounding and therefore evaluating safety. We’ve got to know what the system is, what we’re doing with it, and the environment in which we’re doing it. Let’s move on…
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End: Operating & Support Hazard Analysis
So, that is the end of the lesson and it just remains for me to say thank you very much for your time and for listening. And I look forward to seeing you again soon. Cheers.
Meet the Author
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.