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  • Understanding System Safety Engineering

    Understanding System Safety Engineering

    Understanding System Safety Engineering: A Holistic Approach to Ensuring Safety. To know that we first need to understand what Systems Engineering is…

    Section 1: The Basics of Systems Engineering

    It starts with needs and concepts, which may be quite abstract, and progressively breaks these down into concrete, specific requirements. We also determine how those requirements will be verified.

    Section 2: The Transformative Process

    We then transform those requirements into a logical architecture and then into a design. Then the design is translated into physical and functional components that can be developed or bought. Through all these transformations, the requirements are decomposed and flow down. Thus, we see how each component, or Configurable Item, contributes to meeting the requirements for the overall System.

    Section 3: The Practice of System Safety Engineering

    Finally, we must put the components together – integrate them – perhaps testing as we go to make sure that they work together. We can then verify the completed system, and support customer validation.

    That’s the theory (albeit very briefly, I went on a week-long course just to learn the basics). In my experience, the practice of System Safety Engineering involves five things, it:

    1. Deals with the whole system, including software, data, people, and environment;
    2. Uses a systematic (rigorous) process;
    3. Concentrates on requirements (to cope with complexity);
    4. Considers safety early in the system life cycle; and
    5. Handles complexity cost-effectively and efficiently.

    Understanding System Safety Engineering: A Holistic Approach to Ensuring Safety

    Understanding System Safety Engineering: A Holistic Approach to Ensuring Safety – watch the Lesson Here.
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    System Safety Engineering: Transcript

    What is system safety or system safety engineering? Well, as the name suggests, system safety is engineering safety in a systems-engineering context. Okay. So it’s safety that’s deliberately sat within a systems-engineering framework.

    That drives everything about how we consider safety.  Like systems engineering in general, it follows systems theory. But I’m not going to talk about systems theory now. That’s a huge subject.

    I’m not actually an expert in [the theory], but I’m going to talk about three practical things that I’ve observed from doing system safety for 25 years or so.

    Section 5: Considering the Whole System

    First of all, we consider the system holistically. So it’s not just the technical stuff. It’s not just the hardware. It’s the software as well if there’s any software in the system.

    It’s the operating environment around the system and what we’re doing with it, the functions that we’re asking it to do, all the applications that we’re putting it to, and we include the people who are using it. We include all the data that’s being used, all of the documentation, everything. So we are looking at the system as a whole in accordance with systems theory. That’s the first point.

    Section 6: A Systematic Process

    The second point is that it is systematic from a process point of view.

    We’re following a rigorous process whereby maybe we start with some sort of high-level requirements, and we think about in safety terms what could go wrong. And we think about all of our safety obligations, what we must do. And then we decompose that, break down the problem piece by piece, systematically down to a component level. And then we consider all of the components, and then we systematically integrate it all back together.

    And what I’m kind of indicating is the V model, where we start at the top left-hand corner with our requirements. And then from our requirements, we think about, well, how are we going to demonstrate that we’ve met those requirements at the end of the process? And then we carry on going down the decomposing into more detail but also thinking about how we’re going to verify and validate that we’ve done what we needed to do at every stage when we integrate and come back up the other side.

    So that’s the systematic part of the process.

    Section 7: Requirements and Safety

    And then Thirdly, which are kind of hinted up already, is a big thing about requirements.

    In systems engineering, we are talking about complex stuff. It’s hard to understand. It’s not a toaster. It’s not a simple commodity item, where we can just go, well, I want a toaster and everybody knows what a toaster does or should do and what it shouldn’t do. We want to want it to toast bread and other things, but we don’t want it to electrocute people.

    You know what a toaster is. You don’t need to articulate the requirements of a toaster. But if it’s something more complicated, like a ship or a power station or a complex piece of information technology, you want to develop a big software system to do something, then that’s very complicated, and you need to consider the requirements in a systematic fashion, starting at the top level, thinking about big picture stuff, what’s the system and its boundaries, what does it interact with?  What do we want it to do?

    Then we need to go to a lot of effort to rigorously decompose that and come up with requirements, which you then verify and validate at the end of the project – or preferably before to avoid surprises. That’s a big part of systems engineering, as we’re dealing with complexity, and systems safety evolved to fit in with systems engineering.  It uses all of those concepts, all of those are powerful levers to help us engineer safety into a system rather than just adding it on at the very end.

    Section 8: Think Safety from the Start

    I guess that’s the fourth big point. We start to think about safety right at the beginning, at the top left-hand corner of the V, not just at the end, and then add it on and hope everything will be all right, because that doesn’t usually work. And that’s a very, usually a very expensive and ineffective way to do things.

    So that’s another point that system safety engineering. We are engineering safety into the system early because that is a more cost-effective way of doing it.

    Summary

    To summarise system safety engineering, remember:

    • It’s systematic in terms of the way we think about the system and all of its parts;
    • It’s systematic in terms of the process, the way we approach the task and break down the tasks rigorously and put them back together; and
    • It borrows from systems engineering and systems theory in the way we consider requirements.

    Those three things are system safety engineering. For more on system safety try the FAQ post and the system safety assessment page.

    Understanding System Safety Engineering: A Holistic Approach to Ensuring Safety

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  • Guide to the WHS Act

    Guide to the WHS Act

    This Guide to the WHS Act covers many topics of interest to system safety and design safety specialists. The full-length video explains the Federal Australian Work Health and Safety (WHS) Act (latest version, as of 14 Nov 2020). Brought to you by The Safety Artisan: professional, pragmatic, and impartial.

    This is the four-minute demo of the full, 44-minute-long video.
    see the full-length video here

    Recap: In the Short Video…

    … which is here, we looked at:

    • The Primary Duty of Care; and
    • Duties of Designers.

    Topics: Guide to the WHS Act

    In this full-length video, we will look at much more…

    • § 3, Object [of the Act];
    • § 4-8, Definitions;
    • § 12A, Exclusions;
    • § 18, Reasonably Practicable;
    • § 19, Primary Duty of Care;
    • § 22-26, Duties of Designers, Manufacturers, Importers, Suppliers & those who Install/Construct/Commission;
    • § 27, Officers & Due Diligence;
    • § 46-49, Consult, Cooperate & Coordinate;
    • § 152, Function of the Regulator; and
    • § 274-276, WHS Regulations and CoP.

    Transcript: Guide to the WHS Act

    Click here for the Transcript

    Hi everyone and welcome to the Safety Artisan. Where you will find instructional videos like this one with professional, pragmatic and impartial advice which we hope you enjoy. I’m Simon and I’m recording this on the 13th of October 2019. Today we’re going to be talking about the Australian Federal Work Health and Safety Act. I call it an unofficial guide or system or design safety practitioners (whatever you want to call yourselves). I’m looking at the WHS Act from the point of view of system safety and design safety.

     As opposed to managing the workplace although it does that as well. I recorded a short video version of this. In that, we looked at the primary duty of care and the duty of designers. We spent some time looking at that and that video is available. It’s available at safetyartisan.com and you can watch it on YouTube. So just search for safety artisan on YouTube.

    Topics

    So, in this video, we’re going to look at much more than that. I say selected topics we’re not going to look at everything in the WHS Act. As you can see there are several hundred sections of it. We’ll be here all day. So, what we’re going to look at are things that are relevant to systems safety to design safety. So, we look very briefly at the object of the act, at what it’s trying to achieve. Just one slight of definitions because there’s a lot of exclusions because the Act doesn’t apply to everything in Australia.

     We’re going to look at the Big Three involved. So really the three principles that will help us understand what the act is trying to achieve is:

    • what is reasonably practicable. That phrase that I’ve used several times before.
    • What is the primary duty of care so that sections 18 and 19. And if we jump to
    • Section 27 What are or who are officers and what does due diligence mean in a WHS setting?

    So, if I step back to Sections 22 to 26 you know the duties of various people in the supply chain.  We cover that in the short session. So, go ahead and look at that and then moving on. There are requirements for duty holders to consult cooperate and coordinate. Then there’s a brief mention of the function of the regulator. And finally, the WHS Act enables WHS regulations and codes of practice. So we’re just mentioned that so those are the topics we’re going to cover quite a lot to get through. So that’s critical.

    Disclaimer

    So, first, this is a disclaimer from the website from the federal legislation site. It does remind people looking at the site that the information put up there is for the benefit of the public and it’s free of charge.

     So, when you’re looking at this stuff you need to look at the relevance of the material for your purposes. OK, I’m looking at the Web site. It is not a substitute for getting legal or appropriate professional advice relevant to your particular circumstances. So quick disclaimer there. This is just a way a website with general advice. Hence, this video is only as good as the content that’s being presented okay?

    The Object of the Act

    So, the object of the act, then. I’m quoting from it because I’m using quotation marks, so the main object of the act is to provide a balanced and nationally consistent framework for the health and safety of workers and workplaces.

     And that’s important in Australia because Australia is a federated state. So, we’ve got states and territories and we’ve got the federal government or the Commonwealth as it’s usually known. The laws all those different bodies do not always line up. In fact, sometimes it seems like the state and territories delight in doing things that are different from the Commonwealth. And that’s not particularly helpful if you’re trying to operate in Australia as a corporation. Or if you’re trying to do something big and trying to invest in the country.

     So, the WHS act of a model WHS Act was introduced to try and harmonize all this stuff. And you’ll see some more about that on the website. By the way and I’ve missed out on some objectives. As you can see, I’m not doing one subset B to H go to have a look at it online. But then in Section 2 The reminder is the principle of giving the highest level of protection against harm to workers and other persons as is reasonably practicable. Wonderful phrase again which will come back to okay.

    Definitions

     Now there are lots of definitions in the act. And it’s worth having a look at them particularly if you look at the session that I did on system safety concepts. There I was using definitions from the UK standard. Now I did that for a reason because that set of definitions was very well put together. So it was ideal for explaining those fundamental concepts where the concepts in Australia WHS are very different. If you are operating in Australian jurisdiction or you want to sell into an Australian jurisdiction do look at those definitions. Being aware of what the definitions are will actually save you a lot of hassle in the long run.

     Now because we’re interested systems safety practitioners of introducing complex systems into service. I’ve got the definitions here of plant structure and substance. So basically, plant is any machinery equipment appliance container implement or to any component of those things and anything fitted or connected to any of those things. So, they go going for pretty a pretty broad definition. But bearing in mind we’re talking about plants we’re not talking about consumer goods. We’re not talking about selling toasters or electric toothbrushes to people. OK. There’s other legislation that covers consumer goods.

     Then when it comes to structure again, we’ve got anything that is constructed be fixed or movable temporary or permanent. And it might include things on the ground towers and masks underground pipelines infrastructure tunnels and mining any components or parts thereof. Again, a very broad definition and similarly substance any natural or artificial substance in whatever form it might be. So again, very broad and as you might recall from the previous session a lot of the rules for designers’ manufacturers, importers and suppliers cover plant structure and substances. So hence that’s why I picked just those three definitions out of the dozens there.

    Exclusions

     It’s worth mentioning briefly exclusions: what the Act does not apply to. So, first, the Act does not apply to commercial ships basically. So, in Australia, the Federal legislation covering the safety of people in the commercial maritime industry is the Occupational Health and Safety Act (Maritime Industry) 1993, which is usually known as “OSHMI” applies to commercial vessels, so WHS does not. And the second exclusion is if you are operating an offshore petroleum or greenhouse gas storage platform and I think it’s more than three nautical miles offshore.

     But don’t take my word for that if you’re in that business go and check with the regulator NOPSEMA then this act the Offshore Petroleum and Greenhouse Gas Storage Act 2006 applies or OPGGS for short. So, if you’re in the offshore oil industry then you’ve got a separate Commonwealth act plot but those are the only two exceptions. So, where Commonwealth law applies the only things that WHS. does not apply to is commercial ships and offshore platforms I mentioned state and territory vs. Commonwealth. All the states and territories have adopted the model WHS system except Victoria which so far seems to be showing no interest in adopting WHS.

     Thanks, Victoria, for that. That’s very helpful! Western Australia is currently in process of consultation to adopt WHS, but they’ve still got their current OH&S legislation. So just note that there are some exclusions there. OK so if you’re in those jurisdictions then WHS does not apply. And of course, there are many other pieces of legislation and regulation that cover particular kinds of risk in Australia. For example, there’s a separate act called ARPANS that covers ionizing a non-ionizing radiation.

    There are many other acts that cover safety and environmental things. Let’s go back one when I’m talking about those specific acts. They only apply to specific things whereas WHS act is a general Act applies to everything except those things that it doesn’t like to write move on.

    So Far As is Reasonably Practicable

    Okay now here we come to one of these three big ticket items and I’ve got two slides here. So, in this definition of reasonably practicable when it comes to ensuring health and safety reasonably practicable means doing what you are reasonably able to do to achieve the high standards of health safety in place.

     Considering and weighing up all the relevant matters; including, say, the first two we need to think about the likelihood of a hazard or risk. How likely is this thing to occur as a potential threat to human health? And what’s the degree of harm that might result from the hazard or risk? We’ve got a likelihood and degree of harm or severity. If we recall the fundamental definition of risk is that it’s though it’s the factor of those two things taken together. So, in this first part, we’re thinking about what is the risk.

     And it’s worth mentioning that hazard is not defined in the Act and risk is very loosely defined. So, the act is being deliberately very broad here. We’re not taking a position on or style of approach to describing risks, so to the second part.

    Having thought about the risk now we should consider what the person PCBU or officer, whoever it might be, ought reasonably to know about the hazard or risk and the ways of eliminating or minimizing the risks. So, what we should know about the risk and the ways of dealing with it of mitigating it of controlling and then we’ve got some more detail on these ways of controlling the risk.

     We need to think about the availability and suitability of ways to eliminate or minimize the risk. Now I’m probably going to do a separate session on reasonably practicable because there is a whole guidebook on how to do it. So, we’ll go through that and at some stage in the future and go through that step by step about how you determine availability and suitability et cetera. And so, once you get into it it’s not too difficult. You just need to follow the guidelines which are very clear and very well laid out.

     So having done all of those things, after assessing the extent of the risk and the available ways of controlling it the we can then think about the cost associated with those risk controls and whether the cost of those controls is grossly disproportionate to the risk. As we will see later, in the special session, if the cost is grossly disproportionate to the risk reduction then it’s probably not reasonable to do it. So, you don’t necessarily have to do it but we will step back and just look at the whole thing.

    So, in a and b we’re looking at the likelihood and severity of the risk so and we’re (quantifying or qualitatively) assessing the risk. We’re thinking about what we could do about it, how available and suitable are those risk controls, and then putting it all together. How much will it cost to implement those risk controls and how reasonably practicable to do so. So what we have here is basically a risk assessment process that leads us to a decision about which controls we need to implement in order to achieve that ‘reasonably practicable’ statement that you see in so many parts of the act and indeed it’s also in the definition itself.

     So, this is how we determine what is reasonably practicable. We follow a risk assessment process. There is a risk assessment Code of Practice, which I will do a separate session on. It gives you a basic minimum risk assessment process to follow that will enable us to decide what is reasonably practicable. Okay, quite a big topic there. And as I say we’ll come back and do a couple more sessions on how to determine reasonably practical. Let’s move on to the primary duty of care we covered in the short session.

    The Primary Duty of Care

     So I’m not really going to go through this again [in detail] but basically our primary duty is to ensure so far as is reasonably practicable the health and safety of workers, whether we’ve engaged them whether we’ve got somebody else to engage them or whether we are influencing or directing people carrying out the work. We have a primary duty of care if we’re doing any of those things. And secondly, it’s worth mentioning that the person conducting a business or undertaking the PCBU must ensure the health and safety of other people. Say, visitors to the workplace are members of the public who happen to be near the workplace.

     And of course, bearing in mind that this law applies to things like trains and aircraft if you have an accident with your moving vehicle or your plant you could put people in danger – in the case of aeroplanes anywhere in Australia and beyond. So, it’s not just about the work, the workers in the workplace. With some systems, you’ve got a very onerous responsibility to protect the public depending on what you’re doing. Now for a little bit more detail that we didn’t have in the short session. When we say we must ensure health and safety we’re talking about the provision and maintenance of a safe work environment or safe plant structures or safe systems of work talking about safe use handling and storage of structures and substances.

     We’re talking about adequate facilities for workers that are talking about the provision of information, training, instruction or supervision. Those workers and finally the health of workers and conditions of the workplace are monitored if need be for the purpose of preventing illness or injury. So, there should be some general monitoring of health and safety-related incidents. And if you’re dealing with certain chemicals or are you intentionally exposing people to certain things you may have to conduct special monitoring looking for contamination or poisoning of those people whatever it may be. So, you’ve got quite a bit of detail there about what it means to carry out the primary duty of care.

     And this is all consistent with the duties that we’ve talked about on designers, manufacturers, importers, and suppliers and for all these things there are codes of practice giving guidance on how to do these things. So, this whole work health and safety system is well thought through, put together, in that the law says you’ve got to do this. And there are regulations and codes of practice giving you more information on how you can fulfil your primary directive and indeed how you must fulfill your primary duty.

     And then finally there’s a slightly unusual part for at the end and this covers the special case where workers need to occupy accommodation under the control of the PCBU in order to get the job done. So you could imagine if you need workers to live somewhere remote and you provided accommodation then there are requirements for the employer to take care of those workers and maintain those premises so that they not exposed to risks.

     That’s a big deal because she might have a remote plant, especially in Australia which is a big place and not very well populated. You might be a long way away from external help. So if you have an emergency on-site you’re going to have to provide everything (not just an emergency you need to do that anyway) but if you’ve got workers living remotely as often happens in Australia you’ve got to look after those workers in a potentially very harsh environment.

    And then finally it’s worth mentioning that self-employed persons have got to take care of their own health and safety. Note that a self-employed person is a PCBU, so even self-employed people have a duty of care as a PCBU.

    The Three Duties

    OK, sections 22 to 26. Take that primary duty of care and elaborate it for designers and manufacturers, importers and suppliers and for those installing constructing or commissioning plant substances and structures. And as we said in the free session all of those roles all of the people BCBS is doing that have three duties they have to ensure safety in a workplace and that includes you know designing and manufacturing the thing and ensuring that it’s safe and meets Australian regulations and obligations.

     We have a duty to test which actually includes doing all the calculations analysis and examination that’s needed to demonstrate safety and then to provide needed information to everybody who might use or come into contact with the system so those three duties apply consistently across the whole supply chain. Now we spent some time talking about that. We’re going to move on OK, so we are halfway through. So, a lot to take in. I hope you’re finding this useful and enjoying this. Let’s move on. Now this is an interesting one.

    Officers of the PCBU

    Officers of the PCBU have additional duties and an officer of the PCBU might be a company director. That’s explicitly included in the definition. A senior manager somebody who has influence. Offices of the PCBU must exercise due diligence. So basically, the implied relationship is you’ve got a PCBU, you’ve got somebody directing work whether it be design work manufacturing operating a piece of kit whatever it might be. And then there are more senior people who are in turn directing those PCBUs (the officers) so the officers must exercise due diligence to ensure that the PCBUs comply with their duties and obligations.

    Sections 2 to 4 cover penalties for offices if they fail. I’m not going to discuss that because as I’ve said elsewhere on the Safety Artisan website, I don’t like threatening people with penalties because I actually think that results in poor behavior, it actually results in people shirking and avoiding their duties rather than embracing them and getting on with it. If you frighten people or tell them what’s going to happen to them, they get it wrong. So, I’m not going to go there. If you’re interested you can look up the penalties for various people, which are clearly laid out. We move on to Section 5.

    Due Diligence

     We’re now talking about what is due diligence in the context of health and safety. OK, I need to be precise because the term due diligence appears in other Australian law in various places meaning various things, but here this is the definition of due diligence within the WHS context. So, we’ve got six things to do in order to demonstrate due diligence.

    So, officers must acquire and keep up to date with knowledge of work health and safety matters obligations and so forth. Secondly, officers must gain an understanding of the nature of the operations of the piece and risks they control.  So, if you’re a company director you need to know something about what the operation does. You cannot hide behind “I didn’t know” because it’s a legal requirement for you to do it. So that closes off a whole bunch of defenses in court. You can’t plead ignorance because ignorance is, in fact, illegal and you’ve got to have a general understanding of the hazards and risks associated with those operations. So, you don’t necessarily have to be up on all the specifics of everything going on in your organization but whatever it is that your organization does. You should be aware of the general costs and risks associated with that kind of business.

    Now, thirdly, we are moving on basically C D E and F refer to appropriate resources and processes, so the officers have got to ensure that PCBUs have available and use appropriate resources and processes in order to control risks. OK so that says you’ve got to provide those resources and processes and there is supervision, or some kind of process or requirement to say, yep, we put in let’s say a safety management system that ensures people do actually use the stuff that they are supposed to use in order to keep themselves safe.

     And that’s very relevant of course because often people don’t like wearing, for example, protective personal protective equipment because it’s uncomfortable or slows you down, so the temptation is to take it off. Moving on to part D we’re still on the appropriate processes; we must have appropriate processes for receiving and considering information on incidents, hazards and risks. So again, we’ve got to have something in place that keeps us up to date with the incidents, hazards and risks in our own plants and maybe similar plants in the industry and, we need a process to respond in a timely way to that information.

     So, if we discover that there is a new incident or hazard that you didn’t previously know about. We need to respond and react to that quickly enough to make a difference to the health and safety of workers. So again as another that sort of works in concert with part B doesn’t it. In part A and B we need to keep up to date on the risks and what’s going on in the business and part A, we need to ensure that the PCBU has processes for compliance with any duty or obligation and follows them again to provide that stuff.

    In the system safety world, often the designers will need to provide the raw material that becomes those processes. Or maybe if we’re selling the product, we sell a product with the instruction manual with all the processes that could be required.

    And then finally the officers must verify the provision and use of these resources and processes that we’ve been talking about in C D an E. So, we’ve got a simple six-point program that comprises due diligence, but as you can see it’s very to the point and it’s quite demanding. There’s no shirking this stuff or pretending you didn’t know and it’s I suspect it’s designed to hang Company directors who neglect and abuse their workers and, as a result, harm happens to them.

    But I mean ultimately let’s face it this is all good common-sense stuff. We should be doing this anyway. And in any kind of high-risk industry we should have a safety management system that does all of this and more. These are only the minimum required for all industries and all undertakings in Australia. OK let’s move away from the big stick. Let’s talk about some sort of cozy, softer stuff.

    Consult, Cooperate and Coordinate

    If you are a duty holder, if you’ve got a duty of care to people as a PCBU or an officer, you must consult, cooperate and coordinate your activities with all other offices and bases be used.

    You have a duty in relation to the same matter. So perhaps you are a supplier of kit and you get information from the designer or the manufacturer with the updates on safety or maybe they inform you of problems with the kit. You must pass that on. Let’s imagine you’re introducing a complex system into service. There are going to be lots of different stakeholders, and you all must work together in order to meet WHS obligations. So, there’s no excuse or trying to ask the buck to other people.

    That’s not going to work if you haven’t actively managed the risk, as you are potentially already doing something illegal and again, we won’t talk about the penalties of this. We’re just talking about the good things we’re expected to do. So, we’re trying to keep it positive. And you’ve got a duty to consult with your workers who either carry out work or who are likely to be directly affected by what’s going on and the risks. Now, this is a requirement that procedures in Sections 2 and 3, but of course we should be consulting with our workers because they’ve often got practical knowledge about controlling risks and what is available and suitable to do so, which we will find helpful.

    So, consulting workers is not only a duty it’s actually a good way of doing business and doing business efficiently so moving on to section 152.

    The Regulator

    There are several sections about the regulator, but to my mind, they don’t add much. So, we’re just going to talk about Section 152, which is the functions of a regulator and the regulator has got several functions. So, they give advice and make recommendations to the relevant minister or Commonwealth Minister of the government. They monitor and enforce compliance with the act.

     They provide advice and information to duty holders and the community they collect analyse and publish statistics. They’re supposed to foster a co-operative, consultative relationship in the community to promote and support education and training and to engage in and promote and coordinate the sharing of information. And then finally they’ve got some legal duties with courts and industrial tribunals, and here’s the catch-all, any other function conferred on the regulator by the Act. If we look at the first six the ones that I’ve highlighted there are a number of regulators in Australia and because of the complexity of our federal government system, we’ve got.

     It’s not always clear which regulator you need to deal with and not all regulators are very good at this stuff. I have to say having worked in Europe and America and Australia, for example on Part D. Australian regulators are not very good at analyzing and publishing statistics in general. Usually, if you want high-quality statistics from a regulator, you’re usually better off looking at a European regulator in your industry or an American regulator. The Aussie ones don’t seem to be very good at that, in general.

    There are exceptions. NOPSEMA, for example in the offshore world, are particularly good. But then you would expect because of the inherent dangers of offshore operations. Otherwise, I’ve not been that impressed with some of the regulators. The exception to that is Safe Work Australia. So, if you’re looking for advice and information, statistics, education and training and sharing of information then Safe Work Australia is your best bet. Now ironically Safe Work Australia is not a regulator.

    Safe Work Australia

    They are a statutory authority and they created, in consultation with many others I might say, they created a model WHS Act the model regulations and the Model Codes practice. So, if you go on their website you will find lots of good information on there and indeed I tend to look at that in order to find information to post on safety artisan. So, they’ve got some good WHS information on there. But of course, the wherever you go look at their site you must bear in mind that they are not the regulator of anything or anyone. So, for you’ve also got to go and look at the find the relevant regulator to your business or undertaking and you’ve got to look at what your regulator requires you to do.

     Very often when it comes to looking at guidance your best bet is safe work Australia okay.

    Regulations and Codes of Practice

    I’ve mentioned regulations and codes of practice. Basically, these sections of the act enable those codes of practice and regulations so the Minister has power to approve Commonwealth codes of practice and similarly state and territory ministers can do the same for their versions of WHS. This is very interesting and we’ll come back to relook at codes of practice in another session. An approved code of practice is admissible in court as evidence, it’s admissible as the test of whether or not a duty or obligation under the WHS Act has been complied with.

     And basically, the implication of this is that you are ignorant of codes of practice at your peril because if something goes wrong then codes of practice are what you will be judged against at minimum. So that’s a very important point to note and we’ll come back to that on another session.

    Next, Codes of Practice and then regulation-making powers. For some unknown reason to me, the Governor-General may authorize regulations. I mean that doesn’t really matter. The codes of practice and the regulations are out there, and the regulations are quite extensive.  I think six hundred pages. So, there’s a lot of stuff in there. And again, we’ll do a separate session on WHS regulations soon OK.

    That’s All Folks!

    I appreciate we’ve covered quite a lot of ground there but of course, you can watch the video as many times as you like and go and look at the Act online. Mentioning that all the information I’ve shown you is pretty much word for word taken from the federal register of legislation and I’m allowed to do that under the terms of the license.

    Creative Commons Licence

     And it’s one of those terms I have to tell you that I took this information yesterday on the 12th of October 2019. You should always go to that website to find the latest on Commonwealth legislation (and indeed if you’re working on it state or territory jurisdiction you should go and see the relevant regulator’s legislation on their site). Finally, you will find more information on copyright and attribution at the SafetyArtisan.com website, where I’ve reproduced all of the requirements, which you can check. At the Safety Artisan we’re very pleased to comply with all our obligations.

    Now for more on this video, you may have seen it on Patreon on the Safety Artisan page or you may have seen it elsewhere, but it is for sure available Patreon.com/SafetyArtisan. Okay. So, thank you very much for listening and all that remains for me to do is to sign off and say thanks for listening and I look forward to presenting another session to you in a month’s time. Take care.

    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.

    Back to the WHS Topic Page.

  • Which Skills Should Humans Learn in an Age of ‘AI’?

    Which Skills Should Humans Learn in an Age of ‘AI’?

    Which Skills Should Humans Learn in an Age of ‘AI’? In my previous article, I looked at the new challenge that faces all who teach online. How do we stop students from using AI to cheat on assessments?

    Well, the short answer is: we can’t. Not entirely. AI is now good enough at answering questions to pass some quite tough exams, for example, to become a licensed doctor. On many questions of fact, the AI could be generating the entire answer and the student would not be tested at all.

    In such cases, we would really be testing students on how good they were at using AI.  This is not a facetious idea. As AI is such a wonderful research assistant, perhaps we should be training students to use it – wisely.

    Learning & Writing with AI

    We know that AIs don’t always give correct answers because the data used to train them is not always correct. So students using this technology need to check the answers. Also, I’m beginning to hear that Google is finding and eliminating AI-generated content from search results. If Google can do that, then plagiarism-checking tools will soon do that too (damn that AI).

    So students will need to check their AI’s output, perhaps paraphrasing content and changing its style to suit. Ironically there’s an AI tool for that too! They may also need to add some personal touches. Google prioritizes E-E-A-T: experience, expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness. Students probably need to do the same.

    That said, AI really is a wonderful research assistant. Suppose you feed it your exam question: “Write me an essay about Napolean” and you add “citing sources used”. If your chosen AI does so, you might get a reasonable essay, with citations so that you can fact-check and correct it. Doing so will give you a better essay, which you can then make your own. Result: a good essay!

    (Please note that Chat GPT-4 will not write you a whole essay, it will only provide the structure and sources.)

    Enter Napoleon

    Now, you still have to do some work. But without the AI, it would have taken you many hours to discover lots of things about Napoleon. (Remember: we don’t know what we don’t know.) You could submit a good essay much quicker than without your AI research assistant. Or …

    … you could use the time saved to take it to the next level. Supposing you discover that there are two different schools of thought about Napolean (quite likely about any major subject). You could now instruct the AI to write the same essay but twice – once from each point of view. Using these results, you can compare and contrast them and make your own assessment.

    You now have a great essay! Perhaps, more importantly, you’ve taken your learning, about Napolean and historical analysis, to another level. You used the AI to do the drudgery so you can focus on the clever stuff. Now you have – rapidly – learned some high-level, transferable skills that you can apply to any historical analysis.

    Okay, I’m a safety engineer, so I’m not likely to be answering exam questions about Napoleon. I might conceivably be asked to discuss the approaches of, say, Jens Rasmussen versus Erik Hollnagel. Personally, I’d rather not, but understanding different theories on risk and accident causation is relevant to my profession.

    Whatever you are doing there’s probably an AI for it, in fact, there’s a site with over 3,000 AI tools that do all sorts of things. However, this isn’t an article on how to do things with AI, so…

    Back to the Challenge

    The challenge facing online educators is to assess students in a way that tests the student, not the AI. Online education is a multi-billion-dollar business, and AI could undermine the credibility of most qualifications, so this is a critical issue.

    I think it’s fair to say that we won’t all go back to physically sitting exams in a room with strict security (although I did just that to get my CISSP certification). The costs are too great, and we need remote assessment techniques.

    This means that universities and other education or training providers will look for assessment strategies that AIs struggle with. This means that – if we want top marks – we will need to be good at things that AIs don’t do well.

    Are there any things that AI can’t do (yet)? If so, what are they?

    We Reflect on ‘AI’

    We have to remind ourselves that ‘AI’ is not really intelligent. A lot of what is sold as ‘AI’ is just using statistics to analyze lots of data. I’ve worked with a statistician, and I was amazed at what she could deduce from a data set. Even human behavior is amenable to statistical analysis. We all like to think that we’re original and unique, but we’re mostly not. Sorry.

    The next level up from statistics is Machine Learning (ML). This is a phrase that represents what’s going on much better than ‘AI’.

    Machine Learning

    ML is much more powerful than statistics because it uses a variety of algorithms. These can be much more complex than generic, statistical equations. Specific algorithms are developed to solve specific classes of problems.

    Nevertheless, all ML works by training algorithms on a data set. Humans review the results and tweak the algorithms or the data set, or both, to produce better results. Or perhaps we give the machine a goal and it tweaks itself to get there better and/or faster.

    ML is so effective because decades of research by the best human minds have gone into developing it. An awful lot of human ingenuity is encoded in those algorithms.

    ML itself though works by brute force. Computers are very fast, and they can process vast amounts of data. This data is now easily accessible on the internet, which contains a significant proportion of the vast treasure store of human knowledge. ML isn’t intelligent, it just appears to be because it has been trained by vast repetition. It impersonates human intelligence by copying, merely by rote learning.

    It’s been said that to really be intelligent AI must be able to create something truly original. That article refers to an AI playing the Asian game ‘Go’ – a game rather like checkers. The AI beat a world champion using a revolutionary strategy that no human is ever taught. However, even with this example, I note that Go is a 2D board game where all the counters are identical in character. Surely, this is a problem that is inherently amenable to being solved by a computer?

    But so what?

    Well, if we humans want to stay relevant, then we need to do things that machines can’t. If we understand what they can and can’t do, and get better at the latter, then we add value.

    We Reflect to be Different from Machines

    In my previous article, I mentioned that Chat GPT-4 struggles to reflect on learning. If we go online and look up the word ‘reflect’, we get:

    embody or represent (something) in a faithful or appropriate way.
    think deeply or carefully about.
    (of an action or situation) bring credit or discredit to the relevant parties.

    Google Search

    We have three meanings here, as follows:

    • To represent – to portray, describe, or paraphrase, but not copy – something faithfully or appropriately. We are not simply repeating details, but capturing the essence of something.
    • To think deeply and carefully – not quickly or superficially.
    • To make a value judgment about something, its validity, morality, or desirability.

    At this point, my fellow engineers, as well as scientists and mathematicians, might be wondering what this has got to do with them. After all, 2+2=4, and what is there to reflect on? This ‘reflection’ sounds like something that arts and humanities folk do. OK, perhaps psychologists and business studies too. But us?

    I think we do. In terms that might appeal to engineers, etc., let’s call it the difference between ‘verification’ and ‘validation’.

    Verification versus Validation

    Verification asks: “Did we build the thing right?” We can answer that question by testing it, inspecting it, or analyzing it: does it do what it’s supposed to? If we can’t fully verify the product, perhaps we need some process evidence as well. Did we develop it using a sound process? Does it comply with or conform to applicable standards?

    Verification may be complex, but it’s mechanistic. In verification, “right” means correct – and only that.

    Validation asks: “Did we build the right thing?” In this case, “right” means a whole lot more than just correct.

    It means complete: did we do the whole job? Meet the overall need and not just the written specification? It means comprehensible: does it make sense in context? is it usable by those who need to? is it appreciated by those who paid for it, or wanted by those who might pay for it?

    It may also mean other things. Does it help? Is it ethical? Sustainable? Valuable to a person, group, or society as a whole?

    A thing can be successfully verified yet fail validation, in one or more ways. Becoming skilled at reflecting on the wider implications of what we do can help us all, no matter what our field of endeavor.

    We Curate, not Just Collect as Machines Do

    One of my hobbies is writing fiction – badly. Again and again, I read that to get better, I must read better. I must read a lot, but not just in quantity; I must read the best quality I can get, the best, most successful authors. Writers should not just read within their chosen genre, either, but they must get out of their comfort zone and read all sorts.

    Similarly, I’ve heard it said that ‘the best bands have the best record collections’. The best is not the biggest, but the broadest collection of good-quality music. The aim is not just to collect, but to curate.

    This makes sense as we seek to differentiate ourselves from competing machines. Earlier versions of Chat GPT (and other ‘AI’s) were trained on millions or even billions of web pages. We can’t compete with machines on quantity. Referring back to my previous article, I note that Chat GPT-4 is “safer and more aligned” (good validation words) because it was trained on a human-curated data set.

    Mere repetition is not going to help us. We need to reflect on a broad range of the best-quality stuff we can find. Looking deeper, and slower, asking those ‘validation’ questions. Skills like comprehension, summarising, and producing a precis of others’ work are valuable (b*gger me, my English Literature teacher was right all along). Drawing what I see, not what I think I see (thanks are also due to my Art teacher). Learning from disciplines other than the ones we practice.

    Being a well-rounded person, I guess.

    What do You think?

  • Foundations of Safety Assessment

    Foundations of Safety Assessment

    In this post on the Foundations of Safety Assessment, I’m going to look at the (few) things that we need to do in every System Safety Program.

    Because we don’t always need to do everything. We don’t always need to throw everything at the problem. Some systems are simpler than others, and they don’t need the ‘whole nine yards’ in order to get a decent result. With that knowledge, we’re going to be able to design an analysis program for different applications or for different systems.

    As an example, I’m going to use Military Standard 882E (Mil-Std-882E). Under that standard we would use these Tasks:

    • Task 201 – Preliminary Hazard Identification;
    • Task 202 – Preliminary Hazard Analysis; and
    • Task 203 – System Requirements Hazard Analysis.

    (You will also find related material in my posts on Safety Analysis Techniques Overview and tailoring your Risk Analysis Program.)

    Foundations of Safety Assessment – The Big Picture

    I promised you we were going to look at the overview of the sequence.

    And I think this is what pulls it all together and explains it powerfully. So the background to this is we’ve got, an accident or mishap sequence. Whatever you want to call it and we start with causes on the left and causes lead two a hazard, and then a has it can lead to multiple consequences.

    Bowtie diagram showing five types of hazard analysis.
    Bowtie showing the Foundations of System Safety

    That is what the bowtie here is representing. It’s showing that multiple causes can lead to a single hazard, and a single hazard can lead to multiple consequences.

    Don’t worry too much about the bow tie. I’m not pushing that in particular, it’s a useful technique, but it’s not the only one. We’ll come onto that – that’s the background.

    This is the accident sequence we’re trying to discover and understand. I’m going to talk a lot about discovery and understanding.

    Preliminary Hazard Identification

    Typically, we will start by trying to identify hazards. There are techniques out there that will help us identify hazards associated with the system being used in a specific application, or purpose, in a specific operating environment.

    Always bear in mind those three questions about the context, that help us to do this. What’s the system? What are we using it for? and in what environment?

    And if we change any of those things, then probably the hazards will change. But we start off with preliminary hazard identification, which is intended to identify hazards. There’s a big, big arrow pointing at hazards, but also, inevitably, it will identify causes and consequences as well, because it’s not always clear. What is the hazard when you start? talking of discovery, we’re going to discover some stuff.

    We may finally classify what we’re talking about later. we’re trying to discover hazards. In reality, we’re going to discover lots of stuff, but mainly we hope hazards, that’s stage one.

    System Requirements Hazard Analysis

    Now, then we’re actually going to step outside of the accident sequence itself. We’re going to do some requirements analysis, and the requirements analysis has to come after the PHIA because some safety requirements are driven by the presence of certain hazards.

    If you’ve got a noise hazard somebody’s hearing might be affected, then regulations in multiple countries are going to require you to do certain things to monitor the noise. Let’s say or monitor the effect that it’s having on workers and put in place a program to handle that. The presence of certain hazards will drive certain requirements for safety controls or risk controls.

    Then there are the broader requirements. Analysis of what the law requires, what the regulations require, codes of practice, etc. We’ll get onto that, and one of the things that requirements analysis is going to do is give us an initial stab of what we’ve got to have – certain controls because we’re required to. That’s a little bit of an aside in terms of the sequence, but it’s very, very important.

    Preliminary Hazard Analysis

    Thirdly, and, fourthly, once we’ve discovered some hazards, we’re going to need to understand what might cause those hazards and therefore how likely is the hazard to exist in particular circumstances, and then also think about the consequences that might arise from a hazard. And once we’ve explored those, we will be in a position to actually capture the risk.

     Because we will have some view on likelihood. And we would also have some view on the severity of consequences from considering the consequences. We’ll come onto that later.

    Looking at Controls

    Finally, having done all those other things, we will be in a position to take a much more systematic look at controls and say, we’ve got these causes. We’ve got these hazards. We’ve got these potential consequences.  What do I need to do to control this risk and prevent this accident sequence from playing out?

    What I need to put in place to interrupt the accident sequence, and I’ve put the controls. The dashed lines indicate that we’ve got barriers to that accident sequence, and they are dashed because no control is perfect. (Other than gravity. But of course, if you turn your vehicle upside down, then gravity is working against you, so even gravity isn’t foolproof.)

    No control is 100% effective. We need to just accept that and deal with that, and understand. There is your overview of the sequence, and I’ve spent a bit of time talking about that because it is absolutely fundamental to everything you’re going to do.

    Well, That’s a Brief Summary of the Foundations of Safety Assessment

    If you have any questions, please leave a comment below.

  • How Should We Learn in an Age of ‘AI’?

    How Should We Learn in an Age of ‘AI’?

    ‘How Should We Learn in an Age of ‘AI’?’ is the first in a series of articles addressing this topical subject.

    Introduction

    I’ve created and taught courses on technical subjects for about 20 years now.  I started when I inherited a half-finished course on software supportability in 2001. The Royal Air Force relied on software in all its combat aircraft but knew precious little about software, and less about how to support it.  We needed that course.

    After I left the Air Force, I joined a firm called QinetiQ. I discovered that we had a contract to teach safety to all UK Ministry of Defence staff that required it; the classroom was just down the road from our office.  I joined the instructing team.

    With that experience, I created and taught bespoke safety courses for the Typhoon, Harrier and Raytheon Sentinel platforms.  I also helped create a safety course for the UK Military Aviation Authority.  Since moving to Australia, I have created and sold courses commercially, teaching home workers online for the first time.

    It’s still difficult to access system safety training in Australia, and that’s why I started the Safety Artisan.  In my business, I am only teaching online.

    The Problem

    Recently I’ve been in discussions with colleagues in industry and academia about improving system safety education in Australia.  Because of the COVID-19 pandemic, learning has gone through a revolution.  We are now learning online much more than we ever did; in fact, it’s the ‘New Normal’.

    Now another revolution has occurred: generative Artificial Intelligence (AI).

    “Generative AI is a set of algorithms, capable of generating seemingly new, realistic content—such as text, images, or audio—from the training data. The most powerful generative AI algorithms are built on top of foundation models that are trained on a vast quantity of unlabeled data in a self-supervised way to identify underlying patterns for a wide range of tasks.”

    © 2023 Boston Consulting Group, https://www.bcg.com/x/artificial-intelligence/generative-ai

    This presents a challenge to anyone designing an online course that leads to a certification or award. How do we assess students online, when we know that they can use an AI to help them answer the questions?

    In some circumstances, the AI could be generating the entire answer and the student would not be tested at all.  What we would really be testing them on is how good they were at using the AI.  (I’m not being facetious. As AI is such a wonderful research assistant, perhaps we should be training students to use it – wisely.)

    Enter Chat GPT-4

    OpenAI, the creators of Chat GPT-4, make some big claims for their product.

    “GPT-4 is more creative and collaborative than ever before. It can generate, edit, and iterate with users on creative and technical writing tasks, such as composing songs, writing screenplays, or learning a user’s writing style.”

    OpenAI, https://openai.com/product/gpt-4

    “GPT-4 can accept images as inputs and generate captions, classifications, and analyses.”

    ibid

    “GPT-4 is capable of handling over 25,000 words of text, allowing for use cases like long form content creation, extended conversations, and document search and analysis.”

    ibid

    But perhaps most significant of all is GPT-4’s claimed ‘safety’:

    “We spent 6 months making GPT-4 safer and more aligned. GPT-4 is 82% less likely to respond to requests for disallowed content and 40% more likely to produce factual responses than GPT-3.5 on our internal evaluations.”

    ibid

    In other words, GPT-4:

    • Is less likely to regurgitate nasty sludge from the bottom of the web; and
    • Is more likely* to not make stuff up.

    *Notice that they said “more likely” – this is not certain or assured.  (More on this in a later article.)

    This is because the creators were more selective about the data they used to train the model.  Presumably, this implies that previous efforts just used any old rubbish scraped off the web, but nobody is admitting to that!

    The Beginning of an Answer…

    One of the academics I’ve met (sorry, but I can’t give them credit, yet) has studied this problem.  They’ve come up with some interesting answers.

    In their experiments with GPT-4, they found that it was very good at the things you would expect it to be. It was great at answering questions by gathering and collating facts and presenting written answers.

    But it wasn’t good at everything.  It was not good at reflecting on learning, for example. GPT-4 could not reflect on the learning that the student had experienced.  Similarly, it could not extrapolate what the student had been taught and apply it to new scenarios or contexts.

    Therefore, the way to assess whether students really know their stuff is to get them to do these things. Most assessment marks can still be straightforward questions, which an AI could help answer. But a few marks, maybe only 20%, should require the student to reflect on what they had learnt and to extrapolate it to a new situation, which they must come up with. This bit of the assessment would separate the also-rans from the stars.

    …And a Lot More Questions

    Now there are obvious, mechanistic, reasons why the AI could not perform these tasks.  It had not been exposed to a student’s learning and therefore could not process it.  Even more difficult would be to take a student’s life and work experience – also unknown to the AI – and use that to extrapolate from the taught content.

    (Okay, so there are possible countermeasures to these mechanistic problems.  The next stage is that the AI is exposed to all the online learning alongside the student.  The student also uploads their resume and as much detail as they can about their work to teach the AI.  But this would be a lot of work for the student, just to get those last 20% of the marks. That would probably negate the advantage of using an AI.)

    However, the fact is that GPT-4 and its brethren struggle to do certain things. Humans are great at recognising patterns and making associations, even when they are not logical (e.g. ‘whales’ and ‘Wales’).  We also have imagination and emotion. And we can process problems at multiple levels of cognition, coming up with multiple responses that we can then choose from.  We also have personal experience and individuality. We are truly creative – original. Most AI still struggles to do these things, or even pretend to.

    So, if we want to truly test the human learner, we have to assess things that an AI can’t do well.  This will drive the assessment strategies of all educators who want to teach online and award qualifications.  

    And, guess what?  This is where the $$$ are, so it will happen. Before COVID-19, education was a massive export earner: “Australia’s education exports totalled $40bn in 2019.” This is according to the Strategy, Policy, and Research in Education (SPRE).  

    This then begs the question:

    What Else Can Humans do that AI Can’t (Yet)?

    Why? Because if these are the skills on which we will be assessed, then we need to focus on being good at them. They will get us the best marks, so we can compete for the best jobs and wages.  These skills might also protect us from being made redundant (from those well-paid jobs) by some pesky AI!

    This is what I’m going to explore in subsequent articles.

  • Preliminary Hazard Identification with Mil-Std-882E

    Preliminary Hazard Identification with Mil-Std-882E

    Want to know how to perform Preliminary Hazard Identification with Mil-Std-882E? (This is Task 201 under the standard.)

    This is the first step in safety assessment.  We look at three classic complementary techniques to identify hazards and their pros and cons.  This includes all the content from Task 201, and also practical insights from my 25 years of experience with Mil-Std-882. 

    You Will Learn to:

    • Conduct Preliminary Hazard Identification using diverse techniques for best results;
    • Define what Preliminary Hazard Identification is and does;
    • Record Preliminary Hazard Identification results correctly;
    • Contract for Preliminary Hazard Identification successfully; and
    • Apply it early enough to make a difference.
    This is the seven-minute-long demo video.
    Buy the full lesson here

    Topics: Preliminary Hazard Identification with Mil-Std-882E

    • Task 201 Purpose & Task Description;
    • Historical Review;
    • Recording Results;
    • Contracting; and
    • Commentary:
      • Historical Data;
      • Hazard Checklists; and
      • Analysis Techniques.

    Transcript: Preliminary Hazard Identification

    Hello, everyone, and welcome to the Safety Artisan, where you will find instructional materials that are professional, pragmatic, and impartial because we don’t have anything to sell, and we don’t have an axe to grind. Let’s look at what we’re doing today, which is Preliminary Hazard Identification. We are looking at one of the first actual analysis tasks in Mil-Std-882E, which is a systems safety engineering standard from the US government, and it’s typically used on military systems, but it does turn up elsewhere.

    Preliminary Hazard ID is Task 201

    I’m recording this on the 2nd of February 2020, however, the Mil-Std has been in existence since May 2012 and it is still current, it looks like it is sticking around for quite a while, and this lesson isn’t likely to go out of date anytime soon.

    Topics for this session

    What we’re going to cover is, quoting from the task, first of all, we’re going to look at the purpose and the task description, where the task talks quite a lot about historical review (I think we’ve got three slides of that), recording results, putting stuff in contracts and then I’m adding some commentary of my own. I will be commenting all the way through, that’s the value add, that’s why I’m doing this, but then there’s some specific extra information that I think you will find helpful, should you need to implement Task 201. In this session, we’ve moved up one level from awareness and we are now looking at practice, at being equipped to actually perform safety jobs, to do safety tasks.

    Preliminary Hazard Identification (T201)

    The purpose of Task 201 is to compile a list of potential hazards early in development. two things to note here: it is only a list, it’s very preliminary. I’ll keep coming back to that, this is important. Remember, this is the very first thing we do that’s an analytical task. There are planning tasks in the 100 series, but actually, some of them depend on you doing Task 201 because you can’t work out how are you going to manage something until you’ve got some idea of what you’re dealing with. We’ll come back to that in later lessons.

    It is a list of potential hazards that we’re after, and we’re trying to do it early in development. And I really can’t overemphasize how important it is to do these things early in development, because we need to do some work early on in order to set expectations, in order to set budgets, in order to set requirements and to basically get a grip, get some scope on what we think we might be doing for the rest of the program. this is a really important task and it should be done as early as possible, and it’s okay to do it several times. Because it’s an early task it should be quick, it should be fairly cheap. We should be doing it just as soon as we can when we’re at the conceptual stage when we don’t even have a proper set of requirements and then we redo it thereafter maybe. And maybe different organizations will do it for themselves and pass the information on to others. And we’ll talk about that later as well.

    Task Description

    This is the task description. It says the contractor shall – actually forget about who’s supposed to do it, lots of people could and should be doing this as part of their project management or program management risk reduction because as I said, this is fundamental to what we’re doing for the rest of the safety program and indeed maybe the whole project itself. So, what we need to do is “examine the system shortly after the material solution analysis begins and compile a Preliminary Hazard List (PHL) identifying potential hazards inherent in the concept”. That’s what the standard actually says.

    A couple of things to note here. Saying that you start doing it after material solution analysis has begun might be read as implying you don’t do it until after you finish doing the requirements, and I think that’s wrong, I think that’s far too late. To my mind, that is not the correct interpretation. Indeed, if we look at the last four words in the definition, it says we’re “identifying potential hazards inherent in the concept”. That, I think, gives us the correct steer. we’ve got a concept, maybe not even a full set of requirements, what are the hazards associated with that concept, with that scope? And I think that’s a good way to look at it.

    Historical Review

    This task places a great deal of emphasis on the review of historical documentation, and specifically on reviewing documentation with similar and legacy systems. an old system, a legacy system that we are maybe replacing with this system but there might be other legacy systems around. We need to look at those systems. The assumption is that we actually have some data from similar and legacy systems. And that’s a key weakness really with this, is that we’re assuming that we can get hold of that data. But I’ll talk about the issues with that when I get to my commentary at the end.

    We need to look at the following…

    End: Preliminary Hazard Identification with Mil-Std-882E

    You can find a free pdf of the System Safety Engineering Standard, Mil-Std-882E, 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.

  • Intro to Work Health and Safety

    Intro to Work Health and Safety

    This Intro to Work Health and Safety (WHS) video looks at Australian legislation that is relevant to System Safety.

    When I moved from the UK to Australia in 2012, I had to learn a new legal framework as a safety engineer. I was delighted to find that Australia had taken the principles of UK health and safety law, and crafted a simple, elegant, and readable set of legislation.

    In Australia, WHS law applies not just to the workplace, but to designers, manufacturers, importers, and suppliers of plant, substances, and structures. In other words, it covers design and product safety as well.

    This short video, and the full-length version, should be helpful to system, functional, and design safety practitioners.  It looks at the three classes of ‘upstream’ safety duties of designers, that also apply to manufacturers, importers, suppliers those who install/commission plant substances and structures. 

    Intro to Work Health and Safety: so What?

    Many people think the WHS Act only applies to the management of safety in the workplace. They’re wrong – it does much more than that. In this short presentation, I am going to show you why the WHS Act is relevant to those with ‘upstream’ safety responsibilities such as designers.

    Intro to Work Health and Safety: Topics

    • The primary duty of care;
    • Safety duties of designers (Section 21); and
    • Similar duties apply to others, such as:
      • Manufacturers (Section 23);
      • Importers (Section 24);
      • Suppliers (Section 25);
      • Those installing, constructing or commissioning (Section 26);
      • Officers (Section 27); and
      • Workers (Section 28).

    Intro to Work Health and Safety: Transcript

    Click Here for the Transcript

    Hi everyone and welcome to the Safety Artisan where you will find Professional, pragmatic And impartial Instruction on safety. Which we hope you enjoy. So today we’re talking about the Work Health and Safety (WHS) Act in Australia. Which is surprisingly relevant to what we do in Fact. Let’s see how surprising and relevant it is.

    Were going to look at the WHS Act. And its relevance to what we’re talking about here on the Safety Artisan. And it’s important to answer that question first, The “So what” test. Many people think that the WHS Act is only applicable To safety In the workplace. So they see it as purely an occupational health and safety Piece of legislation.

    And it isn’t!

    It does do that, but it does so much more as well.
    And in this short presentation, I’m going to show you why The WHS act is relevant. To system safety, functional safety, design safety, Whatever we want to call it.

    Now I’m actually looking up some information On the work Health and Safety Act, from The Federal Register of Legislation. And, (In blue letters.) And if we go down to the bottom left-hand side of the screen. We will see
    A little map of Australia with a big red tick on it. And in green, it says ‘in force latest version’. So I looked at the Website Today, the 6th of October. And this is the latest version. Which is just to make sure that We’ve got the right version. In Australia the Jurisdiction of which version of the act is in place Is complex. I’m not going to talk about that in the short session but I will in the full video version.

    The Primary Duty of Care under the WHS Act

    The Primary Duty of Care under the WHS Act is as follows. So a person Conducting a business or undertaking and – a Person Conducting a Business or Undertaking is usually abbreviated to PCBU. A horrible, horrible, clunky term! What it’s trying to say is whether you’re doing business or it is non-profit. Whether you work for the government. Or even if you’re self-employed. Whoever you are and whatever you do. If it’s to do with work, being paid for work. Then this applies to you.

    Those people doing this stuff Are responsible For ensuring the health and
    safety Of workers, who are engaged or paid by the person, by the PCBU. Workers whose activities are influenced or directed by the PCBU while they’re at work. And also the PCBU must ensure the health and safety of Other people. So in the vicinity of the workplace let’s say, or Maybe visitors.

    As always the caveat on this ‘ensuring’ Health and Safety is ‘So Far As is reasonably Practicable’. Again we’re not going to be talking about So far as is reasonably practicable in this session, we’ll talk about it in the longer session; and, in fact, I think I’m probably going to do a session Just on the how to do So far as is Reasonably Practicable Because A lot of people Get it wrong. It’s quite a different concept. If you’re not used to it.

    Designer Duties under the WHS Act

    Moving on. We’ve jumped from Section 19 to Section 22. And we’re now talking about the duties of designers. Well, this doesn’t sound like occupational health and safety does it? So we look at the designer duties of PCBUs who design Plant, Substances, Or structures. So we’re talking industrial plant we’re not talking about commercial goods. There are other
    Acts that apply to stuff that you would buy in a shop. So this is industrial plant, Chemical substances and the like. And structures and those might be buildings. Or they might be ships, floating platforms, whatever they might be. Aircraft. Cars.

    The First WHS Duty of a Designer

    So here we have The First Duty of a designer. And there are three groups of duties. First of all, The designer Has to ensure The health and safety of People in the workplace. If they’re designing plant. If they’re designing or creating. A substance, or A structure. That is to be used, Or might reasonably be expected to be used At a workplace. This duty applies to them. So they’ve got to do whatever it takes. To ensure Health and Safety So far as is reasonably practicable.

    Now, carrying on from that. We get a bit more detail. So the designer has got to ensure, so far as is reasonably practicable, that plant, substance or structure Is designed To be without risks. The risks are To the health and safety of persons, who Are At a workplace. Who might, Use it For the purpose for which it was designed, Who might Handle the substance. Who might store the plant or substance? And who might construct a structure? Or, and here’s the catch-all, who might carry out any reasonably foreseeable activity At a workplace In relation to this plant, substance, or structure.

    And then if we go on to Part (e)(i) And we now get a long list of stuff. Any reasonably foreseeable activity Includes manufacture, assembly, Use, Proper storage, decommissioning, dismantling, disposal, Etc. We run out of space there. But the bottom line is that the scope of this act is cradle to grave. So from the very first time that we Design A plant, substance or structure. Right through to final disposal of said, Plant Substance and structure. The Designer has safety responsibilities. Thinking about the whole lifecycle of This stuff.

    The Second WHS Duty of a Designer

    Now we move on to the other Two duties that a designer has. So in subsection 3. The designer has a duty to carry out testing. That’s what it says in the guide. Actually, if you look at the words in the act it says the designer must carry out or arrange for Calculations, analysis, testing, Or examination. Whatever is necessary for the performance of the duty that We just described In Subsection 2. You recall Subsection 2, cradle to grave, from creation to final disposal. Calculations, analysis, testing or examination Might be needed. The designer has got to Carry that out Or arrange it. In order to ensure safety SFARP.

    The Third WHS Duty of a Designer

    And then, our Final Duty Is having done all of that work. Having designed this stuff to be safe and done all the Calculations and testing. The designer must give Adequate information to each person provided with the design. And the purpose of doing so, We’re not just providing information for the sake of it, or because we felt like it. It’s provided for a specific purpose. So each Purpose, Which the plant, substance or structure was designed. So we need all the information associated With its design purpose.
    We’ve got to provide the results of those calculations, analysis, testing and
    examination.

    And, Probably this is also equally Crucial from a hazard analysis point of view, Any conditions necessary to ensure that the plant, substance or structure Is without risk to health and safety. When it is used for the purpose for which it was designed, Or, (All the other stuff If we go back to
    Section 2.)

    So Section 4, Does actually say this applies to Section 2(a-e). But we ran out of space on the page, so the designers got to provide all the information necessary. for people to use this stuff and for the life cycle of whatever it is from cradle to grave. Now, If we look at Section 4(a-c), We can say that’s the kind of information we generate from Hazard Analysis from safety analysis. So, yeah, Absolutely We need system safety In order to meet these duties, to satisfy these duties.

    A Consistent set of Duties Across the Supply Chain

    And these duties are not just on designers, because the WHS Act Is actually Very, very clever. Because it applies Much the same duties, those three duties that we heard of. The duty to ensure health and safety. The duty to test and analyze. And the duty to provide information. If we look at Sections 22, Through 26, We find that very similar duties apply
    To designers.
    To manufacturers.
    To importers.
    To suppliers.
    And to those installing, constructing, Or commissioning. Substances and
    Structures.
    And the duties in these sections are all consistent. Basically, it recognizes that there is a supply chain. From design right through to installation and commissioning. And Everybody in that chain Has duties To do their part correctly, or to test what they have to. Pass on information, To the next set of stakeholders.

    And then, In addition to that, If we looked in Section 27 we would see the Officers Of the PCBU, so Company directors and the like, People with, major influence, Who are able to direct operations and that kind of thing. So senior management and directors of companies and the equivalent in the public sector Have special requirements applying to them. Again, We’re going to talk about that in the Main Video, Not in this one. And then workers have Duties to Comply with reasonable instructions, That are intended to keep safe And other workers [safe]. So that if we go to Section 28 you get the kind of thing that you would expect to see in work-place safety.

    Copyright and Attribution

    So that’s it In the short video. Just to mention that I have Shown you information From the Federal Register of Legislation. I’m entitled to do that under the Creative Commons license. And I’m making the required attribution statement. You can see it in the middle of the Screen. And for the full information on these terms on copyright and attribution, Please go to that page On my website. And you will find full details of the terms and conditions, under which this video was created. And if you want to see the full version of the introduction to the WHS Act, which is going to cover a lot more ground than this then please go to the Safety Artisan page On www.Patreon.com.

    That’s the Presentation. And it just remains for me to say, Thanks very much for listening. I look forward to meeting you again. Cheers now.

    The Full Version is Here…

    If you want more, if you want a wider and deeper view of the WHS Act, then there’s a longer version of this video. Which you can get at my Patreon page.

    I hope you enjoy it. Well that’s it for the short video, for now. Please go and have a look at the longer video to get the full picture. OK, everyone, it’s been a pleasure talking to you and I hope you found that useful. I’ll see you again soon. Goodbye.

    The full-length ‘Guide to WHS’ post and video is here.

  • The 2022 Digest

    The 2022 Digest

    This is The 2022 Digest – all the posts from The Safety Artisan last year. There have been 31 posts in all covering subjects such as:

    • Risk and Safety basics;
    • Tools and Techniques;
    • A short series on Safety Management (to be continued);
    • Design Safety;
    • SFARP and Australian WHS;
    • Hazard Logs (also to be continued);
    • Launching my Thinkific page;
    • Cyber security;
    • A series on Software Safety and Standards; and
    • Updates of posts on System Safety Analyses.

    Here we go…

    The 2022 Digest: Quarter Four

    In this 45-minute session, I’m looking at System Requirements Hazard Analysis, or SRHA, which is Task 203 in the Mil-Std-882E standard. I will explore Task 203’s aim, description, scope, and contracting requirements.  SRHA is an important and complex task, which needs to be done on several levels to be successful.  This video explains the issues … Read more

    In this 45-minute session, The Safety Artisan looks at how to do Preliminary Hazard Analysis, or PHA, which is Task 202 in Mil-Std-882E. We explore Task 202’s aim, description, scope, and contracting requirements. We also provide value-adding commentary and explain the issues with PHA – how to do it well and avoid the pitfalls. Topics: … Read more

    In this full-length (40-minute) session, The Safety Artisan looks at Functional Hazard Analysis, or FHA, which is Task 208 in Mil-Std-882E. FHA analyses software, complex electronic hardware, and human interactions. We explore the aim, description, and contracting requirements of this Task, and provide extensive commentary on it. (We refer to other lessons for special techniques … Read more

    Are you looking for Safety Engineering Jobs in Australia?  Thinking of moving into the profession and wondering if it’s worth it?  Already a safety engineer and thinking of moving to Australia (Poms, take note)?  Then this article is for you! Introduction The most popular online job site in Australia is seek.com.au. If we go on … Read more

    SW Safety Principles Conclusions and References is the sixth and final blog post on Principles of Software Safety Assurance. In them, we look at the 4+1 principles that underlie all software safety standards. We outline common software safety assurance principles that are evident in software safety standards and best practices. You can think of these guidelines … Read more

    This post, Software Safety Assurance and Standards, is the fifth in a series of six blog posts on Principles of Software Safety Assurance. In it, we look at the 4+1 principles that underlie all software safety standards. We outline common software safety assurance principles that are evident in software safety standards and best practices. You can … Read more

    Software Safety Assurance is the fourth in a new series of six blog posts on Principles of Software Safety Assurance. In them, we look at the 4+1 principles that underlie all software safety standards. We outline common software safety assurance principles that are evident in software safety standards and best practices. You can think of these … Read more

    Software Safety Principle 4 is the third in a new series of six blog posts on Principles of Software Safety Assurance. In it, we look at the 4+1 principles that underlie all software safety standards. We outline common software safety assurance principles that are evident in software safety standards and best practices. You can think of … Read more

    The 2022 Digest: Quarter Three

    Software Safety Principles 2 and 3 is the second in a new series of blog posts on Principles of Software Safety Assurance. In it, we look at the 4+1 principles that underlie all software safety standards. We outline common software safety assurance principles that are evident in software safety standards and best practices. You can think … Read more

    This is the first in a new series of blog posts on Principles of Software Safety Assurance. In it, we look at the 4+1 principles that underlie all software safety standards. We outline common software safety assurance principles that are evident in software safety standards and best practices. You can think of these guidelines as … Read more

    Proportionality is about committing resources to the Safety Program that are adequate – in both quality and quantity – for the required tasks. Proportionality is a concept that should be applied to determine the allocation of resource and effort to a safety and environmental argument based on its risk.  It is a difficult concept … Read more

    This post, Blog: Australian vs. UK Safety Law compares the two approaches, based on my long experience of working on both sides. Are you a safety professional thinking of emigrating from the UK to Australia?  Well, I’ve done it, and here’s my BREXIT special guide!  In this 45-minute video, The Safety Artisan looks at the … Read more

    In this course, ‘CISSP 2021: What’s New?’, we look at the significant changes that have been made to the CISSP Official Exam Outline (the course syllabus). Learn what’s new in the CISSP Curriculum, from May 1st, 2021 (next update in 2024) There are still Eight Domains – D1, D3 & D7 are … Read more

    In this 45-minute video, I discuss System Safety Principles, as set out by the US Federal Aviation Authority in their System Safety Handbook. Although this was published in 2000, the principles still hold good (mostly) and are worth discussing. I comment on those topics where the modern practice has moved on, and those jurisdictions where … Read more

    In this 33-minute session, Safety Concepts Part 2, The Safety Artisan equips you with more Safety Concepts. We look at the basic concepts of safety, risk, and hazard in order to understand how to assess and manage them. Exploring these fundamental topics provides the foundations for all other safety topics, but it doesn’t have to … Read more

    In Hazard Logs – a Brief Summary, we will give you an overview of this important safety management tool. This post serves as an introduction to longer posts and videos (e.g. Hazard Logs & Hazard Tracking Systems), which will provide you with much more content. Hazard Logs – a Brief Summary Description of Hazard Log … Read more

    In this Australian WHS Course, we show you how to practically and pragmatically implement the essential elements of Australian Work Health and Safety Legislation. In particular, we look at the so-called ‘upstream’ WHS duties. These are the elements you need to safely introduce systems and services into the Australian market. Lessons in This Course A Guide … Read more

    The 2022 Digest: Quarter Two

    In this lesson, I will teach you how to demonstrate SFARP. To use the proper terminology, from the Australian WHS Act, how to eliminate or minimize risks so far as is reasonably practicable. (The Act never uses the acronym SFARP or SFAIRP, but everyone else does.) This will build upon the post So Far As … Read more

    Career change: in my lecture to the System Engineering Industry Program at the University of Adelaide, I reflect on my career changes. What can you learn from my experiences? (Hint: a lot, I hope!) I want to talk about career changes because all of you – everyone listening – have already started to make them. … Read more

    In this post on Safety Management Policy, we’re going to look at the policy requirements of a typical project management safety standard. This is the Acquisition Safety & Environmental System (ASEMS). The Ministry of Defence is the biggest acquirer of manufactured goods in the UK, and it uses ASEMS to guide hundreds of acquisition projects. … Read more

    Good work design can help us achieve safe outcomes by designing safety into work processes and the design of products. Adding safety as an afterthought is almost always less effective and costs more over the lifecycle of the process or product. Introduction The Australian Work Health and Safety Strategy 2012-2022 is underpinned by the principle … Read more

    Safety Planning: if you fail to plan, you are planning to fail. In my experience, good safety plans don’t always result in successful safety programs; however, bad safety plans never lead to success. Safety Planning: Introduction Definitions A Safety Management Plan is defined as: “A document that defines the strategy for addressing safety and documents the Safety Management … Read more

    Our Second Safety Management Procedure is the Project Safety Committee. Okay, so committees are not the sexiest subject, but we need to get stakeholders together to make things happen! Project Safety Committee: Introduction Definitions A Safety Committee is defined as: A group of stakeholders that exercises, oversees, reviews and endorses safety management and safety engineering activities. Def … Read more

    In ‘Project Safety Initiation’ we look at what you need to do to get your safety project or program started. Introduction Definitions A stakeholder is anyone who will be affected by the introduction of the system and who needs to be consulted or informed about the development and fielding of the system, and anyone who contributes to … Read more

    The 2022 Digest: Quarter One

    ‘So Far As Is Reasonably Practicable’ is a phrase that gets used a lot, but what does it mean? How do you demonstrate it? Well, in Australia we do it like this … and you can learn from this wherever you operate! Attribution This post uses text from ‘How to Determine what is Reasonably Practicable … Read more

    In Safety Assessment Techniques Overview we will look at how different analysis techniques can be woven together. How does one analysis feed into another? What do we need to get sufficient coverage to be confident that we’ve done enough? Learning Objectives: Safety Assessment Techniques Overview You will be able to: List and ‘sequence’ the five … Read more

    TL;DR This article on Failure Mode Effects Analysis explains this powerful and commonly-used family of techniques. It covers: A description of the technique, including its purpose; When it might be used; Advantages, disadvantages and limitations; Sources of additional information; A simple example of an FMEA/FMECA; and Additional comments. I’ve added some ‘top tips’ of my … Read more

    I’m pleased to tell you that The Safety Artisan is on Thinkific! Thinkific is a powerful and beautifully-presented online Learning Management System.  This will complement the existing Safety Artisan website.   My first course will be ‘System Safety Assessment‘ with ten hours of instructional videos. The new course is here. (Please note that this is the same … Read more

    What is System Safety Engineering? System Safety Engineering does five things: Deals with the whole system, including software, data, people, and environment; Uses a systematic (rigorous) process; Concentrates on requirements (to cope with complexity); Considers safety early in the system life cycle; and Handles complexity cost-effectively and efficiently. System Safety Engineering: Transcript What is system … Read more

    In this article, I look at The Risk Matrix, a widely used technique in many industries. Risk Matrices have many applications! In this article, I have used material from a UK Ministry of Defence guide, reproduced under the terms of the UK’s Open Government Licence. Introduction A risk matrix is a graphical representation of the … Read more

    You heard me right. Risk: Averse, Adverse, or Appetite? Which would you choose? Do we even have a choice? Read on … We often hear that we live in a risk-averse society.  By that, I mean that we don’t want to take risks, or that we’re too timid.  I don’t think that’s the whole story. … Read more

    Thanks for Your Support in 2022!

    Creating The 2022 Digest has reminded me just how much content I have produced this year. If you would like to get content emailed to you every two weeks, plus big discounts on courses then subscribe here!

  • Safety Engineering Jobs in Australia

    Safety Engineering Jobs in Australia

    Are you looking for Safety Engineering Jobs in Australia?  Thinking of moving into the profession and wondering if it’s worth it?  Already a safety engineer and thinking of moving to Australia (Poms, take note)?  Then this article is for you!

    Introduction

    The most popular online job site in Australia is seek.com.au. If we go on this website and search for jobs, let’s say, up to $200,000 salary, we will see about a quarter of a million jobs listed.

    I can tell you from personal experience that the market for skilled jobs is very buoyant at the moment. Recruiting is very difficult and this is driving up salaries.

    Now, out of those quarter of a million jobs, if we search on the terms safe or safety, we will get somewhere between 45,000 and 60,000 hits. Of course, this does not mean that there are that many safety jobs.  Lots of job ads include the word ‘safe’ or ‘safety’ as a motherhood and apple pie statement. “We are committed to having a safe working environment”, or something like that.

    Specific Types of Safety Jobs

    The seek search engine helps us. If we just type in the word ‘safe’ it comes up with five suggestions, and these are safety advisor, safety engineer, safety officer, safety coordinator, and safety manager.

    • Safety Advisor – 2,000 jobs;
    • Safety Officer – 2,000 jobs;
    • Safety Coordinator – 880 jobs;
    • Safety Manager – 2,200 jobs; and
    • Safety Engineer – 700 jobs.

    Let’s quickly deal with the terminology here. Safety officer, safety coordinator, and safety advisor are jobs that tend to be in the work health and safety or WHS area. This is what we used to call occupational health and safety in Australia.

    If you want a job in these areas you will often find that you need industry-specific experience, because you are dealing with quite hands-on issues of occupational health and safety. Wages are okay in these sectors, although not spectacular.

    If you want to work in Safety and earn more money, you probably need to look at becoming a safety manager or safety engineer.

    There are quite a lot of safety manager jobs available. And they are in all sorts of industries. You’re going to need quite a lot of safety experience in order to get one of these jobs, be it in WHS or safety engineering. You will also need to be able to manage other people, rather than doing hands-on engineering work yourself.

    We will look at safety management another time.

    Let’s Look at Safety Engineer Jobs

    Out of 700 safety engineer jobs, this is where they are.  No surprise that engineering is top of the list, but only 44% of safety engineer jobs are in engineering.

    Engineering310
    Construction86
    Mining, Resources & Energy76
    Government & Defence58
    Manufacturing, Transport & Logistics48
    Trades & Services41
    Information & Communication Technology17
    Human Resources & Recruitment16
    Sales13
    Administration & Office Support10
    Hospitality & Tourism7
    Accounting5
    Call Centre & Customer Service3
    Science & Technology3
    Education & Training2
    CEO & General Management1
    Consulting & Strategy1
    Marketing & Communications1
    Real Estate & Property1
    Retail & Consumer Products1
    Table – breakdown of Safety Engineer Jobs by Employment Sector

    We can see the breakdown better in this table.  Construction, Mining, Resources & Energy, Government & Defence, Manufacturing, Transport & Logistics, and Trades & Services account for another 44% of positions.  Many of these categories should come as no surprise.  Mining and Resources are Australia’s biggest export earners (followed by education, interestingly).  Ours is a vast country with plenty of room to expand, so construction, Transport & Logistics are always going to be big employers.

    Histogram – breakdown of Safety Engineer Jobs by Employment Sector

    Government & Defence are big purchasers and operators of sophisticated equipment, so their need for safety expertise is high.  We still make things in Australia, so Manufacturing is in there, and we also have a very strong service economy (remember I mentioned education earlier?) so Trades & Services feature as well.

    Pie Chart – breakdown of Safety Engineer Jobs by Employment Sector

    Last, ICT, Human Resources & Recruitment, Sales, etc., mop up the remaining 12%.  In this ‘tail’, a wide variety of sectors advertise for just a few positions.

    It’s clear that if we want to do safety engineering then we should not limit ourselves to the ‘engineering’ industry.  Many more domains need and want our services.

    Diving Deeper into Engineering

    As Engineering is the biggest sector, let’s look deeper into that.  Systems Engineering and Civil/Structural Engineering comprise a third of positions, as do Project Engineering, Electrical/ Electronic Engineering and Mechanical Engineering.  Again, a wide variety of other sectors make up the final third.

    Systems Engineering62
    Civil/Structural Engineering40
    Project Engineering37
    Electrical/Electronic Engineering35
    Mechanical Engineering30
    Building Services Engineering19
    Maintenance16
    Other14
    Management10
    Process Engineering8
    Project Management8
    Aerospace Engineering7
    Environmental Engineering6
    Industrial Engineering6
    Chemical Engineering4
    Automotive Engineering3
    Engineering Drafting3
    Water & Waste Engineering2
    Table – breakdown of Safety Engineer Jobs in Engineering by Sub-sector

    This is illustrated nicely by the histogram, below.  Note how diverse safety engineering disciplines are – no one sector really dominates here.  

    Histogram – breakdown of Safety Engineer Jobs in Engineering by Sub-sector

    Again, the split is nicely illustrated by the pie chart, below.  We can clearly see how the top five sectors offer two-thirds of the jobs.

    Pie Chart – breakdown of Safety Engineer Jobs in Engineering by Sub-sector

    System Safety Engineering Job Adverts

    To see what employers say they are looking for (not everyone can write an accurate job description), I have analysed a bunch of job adverts.  I looked at 22 adverts for system safety engineering jobs offering a full-time salary of up to $100k, which is basically entry-level in Australia.  I concentrated on the responsibilities that applicants should expect to hold. The results are summarized in this word cloud (thanks Tag Crowd ), below.

    Word Cloud – from 22 adverts for system safety engineering jobs

    As we can see, there are some obvious words that come up repeatedly – engineering, experience, safety, system – which really tell us nothing.  The next level down is more useful – development, design, management, requirements, and project.  (I notice also ‘support’ and ‘team’ but these are very widely-used words, aren’t they?  Nobody wants an uncooperative loner who won’t provide support.)

    For context, and a better understanding, let’s look at the most common phrases in our sample (thanks Online Text Analyzer).  These all recur four times in our sample:

    • “experience with aerospace and/or defence projects”;
    • “strong understanding of systems engineering principles and lifecycle”;
    • “with aerospace and/or defence projects highly”;
    • “aerospace and/or defence projects highly regarded”;
    • “understanding of systems engineering principles and lifecycle management”; and
    • “experience in complex technical development and integration projects”.

    We need to be a little bit careful here.  Clearly, there are one or more employers looking for experience in aerospace and defence, and their ads are using certain stock phrases repeatedly.  As we’ve seen earlier in this article, ‘Government and Defence’ is a significant employer of safety engineers, but aerospace jobs are quite rare. 

    Nevertheless, if we look through this bias we can discern a need for understanding, particularly of systems engineering principles and the systems engineering lifecycle.  We also need to deal with complex technical development and integration projects.

    Thus, in summary, there is a discernible focus on:

    • Development & design;
    • Management;
    • Requirements;
    • Systems engineering principles;
    • Systems engineering lifecycle;
    • Complex technical development; and
    • Complex integration projects.

    There is nothing here to surprise an experienced Systems Engineer (but this article isn’t really written for experts but for those who want in). It’s nice to see it spelt out: this is what employers are willing to pay for.

    Next Time…

    That was ‘Safety Engineering Jobs in Australia’ – back to the Blog. Need some courses to help you along? They’re here.

    Next time I will look at exemplary safety engineer resumes, and I will analyse some salary bands … until then, what’s your view of the safety jobs market in Australia?

  • Software Safety Principles Conclusions and References

    Software Safety Principles Conclusions and References

    Software Safety Principles Conclusions and References is the sixth and final blog post on Principles of Software Safety Assurance. In them, we look at the 4+1 principles that underlie all software safety standards. (The previous post in the series is here.)

    Read on to Benefit From…

    The conclusions of this paper are brief and readable, but very valuable. It’s important for us – as professionals and team players – to be able to express these things to managers and other stakeholders clearly. Talking to non-specialists is something that most technical people could do better.

    The references include links to the standards covered by the paper. Unsurprisingly, these are some of the most popular and widely used processes in software engineering. The other links take us to the key case studies that support the conclusions.

    Content

    We outline common software safety assurance principles that are evident in software safety standards and best practices. You can think of these guidelines as the unchanging foundation of any software safety argument because they hold true across projects and domains.

    The principles serve as a guide for cross-sector certification and aid in maintaining comprehension of the “big picture” of software safety issues while evaluating and negotiating the specifics of individual standards.

    Conclusion

    These six blog posts have presented the 4+1 model of foundational principles of software safety assurance. The principles strongly connect to elements of current software safety assurance standards and they act as a common benchmark against which standards can be measured.

    Through the examples provided, it’s also clear that, although these concepts can be stated clearly, they haven’t always been put into practice. There may still be difficulties with their application by current standards. Particularly, there is still a great deal of research and discussion going on about the management of confidence with respect to software safety assurance (Principle 4+1).

    [My own, informal observations agree with this last point. Some standards apply Principle 4+1 more rigorously, but as a result, they are more expensive. As a result, they are less popular and less used.]

    Standards and References

    [1] RTCA/EUROCAE, Software Considerations in Airborne Systems and Equipment Certification, DO-178C/ED-12C, 2011.

    [2] CENELEC, EN-50128:2011 – Railway applications – Communication, signaling and processing systems – Software for railway control and protection systems, 2011.

    [3] ISO-26262 Road vehicles – Functional safety, FDIS, International Organization for Standardization (ISO), 2011

    [4] IEC-61508 – Functional Safety of Electrical / Electronic / Programmable Electronic Safety-Related Systems. International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC), 1998

    [5] FDA, Examples of Reported Infusion Pump Problems, Accessed on 27 September 2012,

    http://www.fda.gov/MedicalDevices/ProductsandMedicalProcedures/GeneralHospitalDevicesandSupplies/InfusionPumps/ucm202496.htm

    [6] FDA, FDA Issues Statement on Baxter’s Recall of Colleague Infusion Pumps, Accessed on 27 September 2012, http://www.fda.gov/NewsEvents/Newsroom/PressAnnouncements/ucm210664.htm

    [7] FDA, Total Product Life Cycle: Infusion Pump – Premarket Notification 510(k) Submissions, Draft Guidance, April 23, 2010.

    [8] “Report on the Accident to Airbus A320-211 Aircraft in Warsaw on 14 September 1993”, Main Commission Aircraft Accident Investigation Warsaw, March 1994, http://www.rvs.unibielefeld.de/publications/Incidents/DOCS/ComAndRep/Warsaw/warsaw-report.html  Accessed on 1st October 2012.

    [9] JPL Special Review Board, “Report on the Loss of the Mars Polar Lander and Deep Space 2 Missions”, Jet Propulsion Laboratory”, March 2000.

    [10] Australian Transport Safety Bureau. In-Flight Upset Event 240Km North-West of Perth, WA, Boeing Company 777-2000, 9M-MRG. Aviation Occurrence Report 200503722, 2007.

    [11] H. Wolpe, General Accounting Office Report on Patriot Missile Software Problem, February 4, 1992, Accessed on 1st October 2012, Available at: http://www.fas.org/spp/starwars/gao/im92026.htm

    [12] Y.C. Yeh, Triple-Triple Redundant 777 Primary Flight Computer, IEEE Aerospace Applications Conference pg 293-307, 1996.

    [13] D.M. Hunns and N. Wainwright, Software-based protection for Sizewell B: the regulator’s perspective. Nuclear Engineering International, September 1991.

    [14] R.D. Hawkins, T.P. Kelly, A Framework for Determining the Sufficiency of Software Safety Assurance. IET System Safety Conference, 2012.

    [15] SAE. ARP 4754 – Guidelines for Development of Civil Aircraft and Systems. 1996.

    Software Safety Principles: End of the Series

    This blog post series was derived from ‘The Principles of Software Safety Assurance’, by RD Hawkins, I Habli & TP Kelly, University of York. The original paper is available for free here. I was privileged to be taught safety engineering by Tim Kelly, and others, at the University of York. I am pleased to share their valuable work in a more accessible format.

    Meet the Author

    My name’s Simon Di Nucci. I’m a practicing system safety engineer, and I have been, for the last 25 years; I’ve worked in all kinds of domains, aircraft, ships, submarines, sensors, and command and control systems, and some work on rail air traffic management systems, and lots of software safety. So, I’ve done a lot of different things!

    Principles of Software Safety Training

    Learn more about this subject in my course ‘Principles of Safe Software’ here.

    My course on Udemy, ‘Principles of Software Safety Standards’ is a cut-down version of the full Principles Course. Nevertheless, it still scores 4.42 out of 5.00 and attracts comments like:

    • “It gives me an idea of standards as to how they are developed and the downward pyramid model of it.” 4* Niveditha V.
    • “This was really good course for starting the software safety standareds, comparing and reviewing strengths and weakness of them. Loved the how he try to fit each standared with4+1 principles. Highly recommend to anyone that want get into software safety.” 4.5* Amila R.
    • “The information provides a good overview. Perfect for someone like me who has worked with the standards but did not necessarily understand how the framework works.” 5* Mahesh Koonath V.
    • “Really good overview of key software standards and their strengths and weaknesses against the 4+1 Safety Principles.” 4.5* Ann H.