The Safety Artisan

Category: Risk Assessment

  • Designing Your Risk Assessment Program

    Designing Your Risk Assessment Program

    Designing Your Risk Assessment Program. Which Ingredients should we use? In this post, I draw upon my 25+ years in system safety to give you some BOLD advice! I’m going to dare to suggest which analysis tasks are essential to every System Safety Program. I also suggest which tasks are optional depending on the system that you are analyzing.

    Which Ingredients should we use?

    • Everything – high novelty, challenging requirements, bespoke development and massive scrutiny);
    • The Bare Essentials;
    • New Designs and Integrations;
    • The Human Element;
    • Electronics, Software and Data;
    • Combining existing Systems; and
    • Environmental Protection.

    Video Highlights

    Designing Your Safety Program – Highlights (SSRAP M4)

    Topics

    Designing Your Risk Assessment Program: Transcript

    We’re onto Module Four – Designing Your Program.

    This module aims to show you how to design a systematic, effective strategy for Risk Analysis. An effective program for Risk Analysis that isn’t wasteful. This module is a little bit longer than the others but bear with me! This is the real meat of what I promised you. So, let’s get started.

    Multiple Points of View

    As I said in a previous slide, we will deal with multiple points of view. We will use multiple points of view to look at the system from many different angles.

    Ten different angles, in this case, one for each task. Each of those tasks brings a different perspective. So, each task has a different purpose. What they have in common is they are all there to bring out a different aspect of the system. They are different kinds of analysis, but they all have the same aim. To identify hazards and analyze hazards.

    From that, we can then identify what we need to do to control those hazards. And that, in turn, gives us safety requirements. Sometimes they’re called ‘derived safety requirements’. They need to be met for the system to be safe. That’s the whole point of what we’re doing, as mentioned before.

    Which Ingredients?

    But if you’ve got everything then you only need all those 10 tasks if everything is in the red. Perhaps you’ve got a very novel system. You’ve got challenging performance requirements. You’ve got lots of bespoke development. And you’ve got a very critical system that’s going to get a lot of scrutiny. So, you need all 10 only if you’ve got a development from hell. Where you’ve got a very challenging development and you need all the tools you can get.

    Now, that’s fine. That’s what the standard’s designed for. But very rarely are we going to work on a program where we’re pulling out all the stops. More often, we’re going to be working on something where there are some challenging areas and some less so. And we don’t need the entire program. We don’t need all 10 tasks to achieve success. And it’s OK to tailor your safety analysis to deliver value for money. In fact, this approach is better.

    So, we’ve got some options here. I’m going to take you through the bare essentials. Those are what you need to do for every safety program. The work that we would do to address new designs and new integrations. Work that we would do to address the human element. This includes both parts of human factors. That’s the human contribution to safety and the impact that the system might have on human health. So, there’s a bit of back and forth in there in the two tasks there.

    Then if our system has got programmable electronic software, we might need to look at that. Or if it has data that is being developed or modified, we need to look at that too. We need to assess the safety implications of the modifications/development. We might consider combining existing systems into a system of systems. And then finally, we might have to do environmental protection. So, the bare essentials plus those five optional elements are the ones that we will look at.

    The Essentials #1

    Let’s start with the essentials. I’m going to say it’s axiomatic – that every program needs these three tasks. It needs Preliminary Hazard Identification. It needs Preliminary Hazard Analysis. And it needs System Requirements Hazard Analysis. The last one is about identifying safety requirements for the system.

    Now, that’s a very bold statement, is it for me to say you must have these elements in every safety program? Let me justify that, first of all, before I explain it a little bit in the next slide.

    The first thing to note is that you can do these tasks early on. They are quick and cheap tasks if you do them early enough. If you do them early enough, it’s low granularity. So, it can be a quick and simple analysis. And because of that, it’s cheap. But don’t let that fool you! Getting in early and thinking about Risk early gives us valuable insight. Insight that we can then take action on. So we get actionable results early enough in the program to do something about it if we do it.

    The second point to note with these three is that every other task depends on their outputs. Indeed, if you’re going to successfully tailor a safety program, you need the output from these tasks. They will help you focus on what’s important and what’s less important.

    Thirdly, from experience, almost every program suffers from not doing these three tasks. Whether that be well enough, early enough, or both. I’ve never been on a program where we said, ‘We did too much Preliminary Hazard Identification Analysis!’. Nor ‘We did too much identification of safety requirements!’. That has never, ever happened in more than 20 years of experience working on safety programs.

    It’s always been the opposite. We wish we’d done more. We wish we’d gone in earlier with these tasks. Then we would have known something that would have helped us to make sensible decisions. Ultimately, it would have saved a lot of time and money too! Think of these essentials as an investment, because that’s what they are…

    This is Module 4 of SSRAP

    This is Module 4 of the System Safety Risk Assessment Program (SSRAP) Course. Risk Analysis Programs – Design a System Safety Program for any system in any application.

    The full course comprises 15 lessons and 1.5 hours of video content, plus resources. It’s on pre-sale at HALF PRICE until September 1st, 2024. Check out all the free preview videos here and order using the coupon “Pre-order-Half-Price-SSRAP”. But don’t leave it too long because there are only 100 half-price courses available!

    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.

  • Understanding Your Risk Assessment Standard

    Understanding Your Risk Assessment Standard

    When Understanding Your Risk Assessment Standard, we need to know a few things. The standard is the thing that we’re going to use to achieve things – the tool. And that’s important because tools designed to do certain things usually perform well. But they don’t always perform well on other things. So we will ask, ‘Are we doing the right thing?’ And ‘Are we doing it right?’

    This post is part of a series:

    Video Highlights

    Understanding Your Standard: Highlights

    Transcript

    What and Why?

    So, what will we do and why are we doing it? First, the use of safety standards is very common for many reasons. It helps us to have confidence that what we’re doing is good enough. We’ve met a standard of performance in the absolute sense. It helps us to say, ‘We’ve achieved standardization or commonality in what we’re doing’.

    We can also use it to help us achieve a compromise. That can be a compromise across different stakeholders or different organizations. Standardization gives us some of the other benefits as well. If we’re all doing the same thing rather than we’re all doing different things, it makes it easier to train staff. This is one example of how a standard helps.

    However, we need to understand this tool that we’re going to use. What it does, what it’s designed to do, and what it is not designed to do. That’s important for any standard or any tool. In safety, it’s particularly important because safety is, in many respects, an intangible. This is because we’re always looking to prevent a future problem from occurring. In the present, it’s a little bit abstract. It’s a bit intangible. So, we need to make sure that conceptually what we’re doing makes sense and it’s coherent. That it works together. If we look at those five bullet points there, we need to understand the concept of each standard. We need to understand the basis of each one.

    They’re not all based on the same concept. Thus, some of them are contradictory or incompatible. We need to understand the design of the standard. What the standard does, what the aim of the standard is, and why it came into existence. And who brought it into existence. To do what for whom – who’s the ultimate customer here?

    For risk analysis standards, we need to understand what kind of risks they address. Because the way you treat a financial risk might be very different from a safety risk. In the world of finance, you might have a portfolio of products, like loans. These products might have some risks associated with them. One or two loans might go bad, and you might lose money on those. But as long as the whole portfolio is making money, that might be acceptable to you. You might say, ‘I’m not worried about that 10% of my loans have gone south and all gone wrong. I’m still making plenty of profit out of the other 90%.’ It doesn’t work that way with safety. You can’t say ‘It’s OK that I’ve killed a few people over here because all this a lot over here are still alive!’. It doesn’t work like that!

    Also, what kind of evidence does the standard produce? Because in safety, we are very often working in a legal framework that requires us to do certain things. It requires us to achieve a certain level of safety and prove that we have done so. So, we need certain kinds of evidence. In different jurisdictions and different industries, some evidence is acceptable. Some are not. You need to know which is for your area. And then finally, let’s think about the pros and cons of the standard. What does it do well? And what does it do not so well?

    System Safety Pedigree

    We’re going to look at a standard called Military Standard 882E. This standard was first developed several decades ago. It was created by the US government and military to help them bring into service complex, cutting-edge military equipment. Equipment that was always on the cutting edge. That pushes the limits of what you can achieve in performance.

    That’s a lot of complexity. Lots of critical weapon systems, and so forth. So they needed something that could cope with all that complexity. It’s a system safety engineering standard. It’s used by engineers, but also by many other specialists. As I said, it’s got a background in military systems. These days, you find these principles used pretty much everywhere. So, all the approaches to System Safety that 882 introduced are in other standards. They are also in other countries.

    It addresses risks to people, equipment, and the environment, as we heard earlier. And because it’s an American standard, it’s about system safety. It’s very much about identifying requirements. What do we need to happen to get safety? To do that, it produces lots of requirements. It performs analyses of all those requirements and generates further requirements. And it produces requirements for test evidence. We then need to fulfill these requirements. It’s got several important advantages and disadvantages. We’re going to discuss these in the next few slides…

    This is Module 3 of SSRAP

    ‘Understanding Your Risk Assessment Standard’ is Module 3 of the System Safety Risk Assessment Program (SSRAP) Course. Risk Analysis Programs – Design a System Safety Program for any system in any application.

    The full course comprises 15 lessons and 1.5 hours of video content, plus resources. It’s on pre-sale at HALF PRICE until September 1st, 2024. Check out all the free preview videos here and order using the coupon “Pre-order-Half-Price-SSRAP”. But don’t leave it too long because there are only 100 half-price courses available!

    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.

  • System Safety Risk Analysis

    System Safety Risk Analysis

    In this module, System Safety Risk Analysis, we’re going to look at how we deal with the complexity of the real world. We do a formal risk analysis because real-world scenarios are complex. The Analysis helps us to understand what we need to do to keep people safe. Usually, we have some moral and legal obligation to do it as well. We need to do it well to protect people and prevent harm to people.

    This post is part of a series:

    Aim: How do we deal with real-world complexity?

    • What is System Safety?
    • The Need for Process;
    • A Realistic, Useful, Powerful process:
    • Context, Communication & Consultation;
    • Monitoring & Review, Risk Treatment; and
    • Required Risk Reduction.

    Transcript: System Safety Risk Analysis

    What is System Safety?

    To start with, here’s a little definition of system safety. System safety is the application of engineering and management principles, criteria, and techniques to achieve acceptable risk within a wider context.

    This wider context is operational effectiveness – we want our system to do something. That’s why we’re buying it or making it. The system has to be suitable for its use. We’ve got some time and cost constraints, and we’ve got a life cycle. We can imagine we are developing something from concept, from cradle to grave.

    And what are we developing? We’re developing a system. An organization of hardware (or software) material, facilities, people, data, and services. All these pieces will perform a designated function within the system. The system will work within a stated or defined operating environment. It will work to produce specified results.

    We’ve got three things here: a system; the operating environment in which it is designed to work; and, we have its function or application. Why did we buy it, or make it in the first place? What’s it supposed to do? What benefits is it supposed to bring humankind? What does it mean in the context of the big picture?

    That’s what a system is. I’m not going to elaborate on systems theory or anything like that. That’s a whole big subject on its own. But we’re talking about something complex. We’re not talking about a toaster. It’s not consumer goods. It’s something complicated that operates in the real world. And as I say, we need to understand those three things – system, environment, purpose – to work out Safety.

    This is Module 2 of SSRAP

    This is Module 2 from the System Safety Risk Assessment Program (SSRAP) Course. Risk Analysis Programs – Design a System Safety Program for any system in any application.

    The full course comprises 15 lessons and 1.5 hours of video content, plus resources. It’s on pre-sale at HALF PRICE until September 1st, 2024. Check out all the free preview videos here and order using the coupon “Pre-order-Half-Price-SSRAP”. But don’t leave it too long because there are only 100 half-price courses available!

    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.

  • SSRAP: Start the Course

    SSRAP: Start the Course

    This post, ‘SSRAP: Start the Course’, gives an overview of System Safety Risk Assessment Programs. It describes the Learning Objectives of the Course and its five modules. We’re going to learn how to:

    • Describe fundamental risk concepts.
    • Explain what a Systems Safety Approach to Risk is.
    • Define within that System Safety Approach, what a Risk Analysis Program is.
    • List Hazard Analysis Tasks that make up a program.
    • Select tasks to meet our needs.
    Start of the Course: Highlights

    This post is part of a series:

    SSRAP: Start of the Course – Transcript

    Welcome to this course on System Safety Risk Analysis Programs. It’s a five-part course for beginners and practitioners. It will also benefit a wider range of people.

    Learning Objectives

    In this course, we will learn how to do several things. First of all, we’re going to learn how to describe fundamental risk concepts. We’re going to explain what a Systems Safety Approach to Risk is and what it does. We will define within that System Safety Approach, what a Risk Analysis Program is. We’re going to be able to list Hazard Analysis Tasks that make up a program. We’ll be able to select tasks to meet our needs.

    At the end of this task, we should be able to design a tailored Risk Analysis Program for any application. And also, we’re going to learn how to get some more information resources on how to do that.

    Topics for this Course

    So how is that going to work? Well. In five modules. In Module One, we’re going to go over some risk basics. The reason for this is to make sure we’ve got a common understanding.

    In Module Two, we’re going to look at Systems Safety Risk Analysis. What it is, what it does, and the benefits it delivers.

    In Module Three, we will look at a particular System Safety Program Standard. We will understand what it was designed to do and learn what it’s good and not so good at.

    In Module Four, we’re going to take all the previous knowledge from Modules One to Three and put it together. We will use that information to design a Risk Analysis Program. This information can also help design any number of programs depending on what we want to do.

    And then finally, in Module Five, we’ll look at where to get more resources to take us deeper to the next level…

    This is SSRAP: Start of the Course

    This is Module 1 from the System Safety Risk Assessment Program (SSRAP) Course. Risk Analysis Programs – Design a System Safety Program for any system in any application.

    The full course comprises 15 lessons and 1.5 hours of video content, plus resources. It’s on pre-sale at HALF PRICE until September 1st, 2024. Check out all the free preview videos here and order using the coupon “Pre-order-Half-Price-SSRAP”. But don’t leave it too long because there are only 100 half-price courses available!

    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.

  • Introduction to System Safety Risk Assessment

    Introduction to System Safety Risk Assessment

    In this ‘Introduction to System Safety Risk Assessment’, we will pull together several key ideas.

    First, we’ll talk about System Safety. This is safety engineering done in a Systems Engineering Framework. We are doing safety within a rigorous process.

    Second, we’re talking about Risk Assessment. This is a term for putting together different activities within another process. This process may be basic, or it might be quite sophisticated, as illustrated, below.

    Shows the elements, progression and cycle of the Risk Assessment Process from ISO 31000
    The Risk Assessment Process

    Third, and finally, we will put all this together into a System Safety Program. This is hinted at in the diagram, above, but a real system safety program needs to do a lot more than this. It needs to tie into the project it supports, to systems engineering, to resources, quality, V&V, etc. Designing such a program is complex, so we typically follow a standard, like Mil-Std-882E.

    You can hear more about this in the introductory video, below.

    Introduction Video

    This post is part of a series:

    Transcript:

    Introduction

    Hello,

    Welcome to this course on Systems Safety Risk Analysis Programs. I’m Simon Di Nucci, The Safety Artisan, and I’ve been a safety engineer and consultant for over 20 years. I’ve worked on a wide range of safety programs doing risk analysis on all kinds of things. Ships, planes, trains, air traffic management systems, software systems, you name it.

    I’ve worked in the U.K., in Australia, and on many systems from the U.S. I’ve also spent hundreds of hours training hundreds of people on safety. And now I’ve got the opportunity to share some of that knowledge with you online.

    So, what are the benefits of this course?

    First of all, you will learn about basic concepts. About system safety, what it is and what it does. You will know how to apply a risk analysis program to a very complex system and how to manage that complexity. So, that’s what you’ll know.

    At the end of the course, you will also be able to do things that you might not have been able to do before. You will be able to take the elements of a risk analysis program and the different tasks. You can select the right tasks and form a program to suit your application, whatever it might be. Whether you might:

    • Have a full, high-risk bespoke development system,
    • Be taking a commercial system off the shelf and doing something new with it, or
    • Take a product and use it in a new application or a new location.

    Whatever it might be, you will learn how to tailor your risk analysis program. This program will give you the analyses you need. And to meet your legal and regulatory requirements. Once you’ve learned how to do this, you can apply it to almost any system.

    Finally, you will feel confident doing this. I will be interpreting the terminology used in the tasks and applying my experience. So, instead of reading the standard and being unsure of your interpretation, you can be sure of what you need to do. Also, I will show you how you can get good results and avoid some of the pitfalls.

    These are the three benefits of the Course

    1. You will know what to do.
    2. You will be able to perform risk program tasks, and
    3. You’ll feel confident doing those tasks.

    At the end of the course, I will also show you where to find further resources. There are free resources to choose from. But there are also paid resources for those who want to take your studies to the next level. I hope you enjoy the course.

    This is Module 1 of SSRAP

    This is Module 1 from the System Safety Risk Assessment Program (SSRAP) Course. Risk Analysis Programs – Design a System Safety Program for any system in any application.

    The full course comprises 15 lessons and 1.5 hours of video content, plus resources. It’s on pre-sale at HALF PRICE until September 1st, 2024. Check out all the free preview videos here and order using the coupon “Pre-order-Half-Price-SSRAP”. But don’t leave it too long because there are only 100 half-price courses available!

    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.

  • Risk Analysis Programs

    Risk Analysis Programs

    Risk Analysis Programs – Design a System Safety Program for any system in any application.

    Introduction to the System Safety Risk Analysis Programs Course.

    Risk Analysis Programs: Learning Objectives

    At the end of this course, you will be able to:

    • Describe fundamental risk concepts;
    • Explain what a system safety approach is and does;
    • Define what a risk analysis program is;
    • List the hazard analysis tasks that make up a program;
    • Select tasks to meet your needs;
    • Design a tailored analysis program for any application; and
    • Know how to get more information and resources.
    get the full course

    Risk Analysis Programs: Transcript

    Introduction

    Hello and welcome to this course on Systems Safety Risk Analysis Programs. I’m Simon Di Nucci, The Safety Artisan, and I’ve been a safety engineer and consultant for over 20 years.

    I’ve worked on a wide range of safety programs doing risk analysis on all kinds of things. Ships, planes, trains, air traffic management systems, software systems, you name it. I’ve worked in the U.K., in Australia, and on many systems from the US.

    I’ve also trained hundreds of people on safety. And now I’ve
    got the opportunity to share some of that knowledge with you online.

    So, what are the benefits of this course?

    First of all, you will learn about basic concepts. About system safety, what it is, and what it does. You will know how to apply a risk analysis program to a very complex system and how to manage that complexity. So, that’s what you’ll know.

    At the end of the course, you will also be able to do things that you might not have been able to do before. You will be able to take the elements of a risk analysis program and the different tasks. Select the right tasks and form a program to suit your application, whatever it might be.

    You might have a full, high-risk bespoke development system. Or take a commercial system off the shelf and do something new with it. You might be taking a product and using it in a new application or a new location. Whatever it might be, you will learn how to tailor your risk analysis program.

    This program will give you the analyses you need, to meet your legal and regulatory requirements. Once you’ve learned how to do this, you can apply it to almost any system.

    Finally, you will feel confident doing this. I will be interpreting the terminology used in the tasks and applying my experience. So, instead of reading the standard and being unsure of your interpretation, you can be sure of what you need to do. Also, I will show you how you can get good results and avoid some of the pitfalls.

    So, these are the three benefits of the program:

    • You will know what to do.
    • You will be able to do things, and …
    • You’ll be feeling confident doing the tasks.

    At the end of the course, I will also show you where to find further resources. There are free resources to choose from. But there are also paid resources for those who want to take their studies to the next level. I hope you enjoy the course.

    Get the supporting safety analysis courses here.

    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.