Reflections on a Career in Safety, Part 5

In 'Reflections on a Career in Safety, Part 5', I finally get around to reflecting on personal lessons learned from my own career.



Reflecting on a Career in Safety



Very briefly, I just wanted to pick out three things.



Learning and Practice



First, at university in my first degree and in my master's degree and in studies I've done since then (because you never stop learning) you pick up a theoretical framework, which is fantastic.  You learn to understand things from an abstract point of view or a theoretical point of view.



But there's also practical experience, and the two complement each other. You can a job. You're usually doing the same thing over and over again. So you become very competent in that narrow area. But if you don't have the theoretical framework to put it in, you've got all of these jewels of experience, but you can't understand where they fit in in the big picture.



Wilhelmshaven, Picture by S. Di Nucci



And so that's what your course here does. Whatever courses you do in the future, whatever learning you do in the future, the two complement each other, and actually they work together. Whether I turn up and I understand something from a theoretical point of view, or I've actually done it and learned the hard way (usually doing it the hard way is painful), the two are complementary and they're very useful to help you in your career.



Opportunism and Principles



Second, you've heard me say a couple of times I got into software by accident. I got into safety by accident. And it's all true. An opportunity comes up and you've got to grab it either because you think, well, maybe this opportunity won't come again or you're trying to get out of a job that you don't like or avoid doing something you don't want to do, whatever it might be.



If you have an opportunity, I would say grab it, go for it, be positive and say yes to as many things as you can. And, if I dare to give you some career advice, it would be that.



Photo by Aziz Acharki on Unsplash



But also, in safety, we've got to stick to our principles. And sometimes as a safety engineer or an engineer who does safety, you're going to have to stick to something that costs you, whether it be a promotion or, whether people no longer listen to you because you said, “no, we can't do that” when it's something that they really want to do.



You have to understand the difference between things that matter and things that don't. So if you end up in safety, if you're working with the safety of people, learn the things that cannot be negotiated.  There are certain requirements in the law and regulations, but they're often not as onerous as people think. They're often a lot simpler than people think. So understand: what has to be done and what is optional?  What is merely beneficial. And then you can make a sound judgment.



Simplicity



The final point. Einstein once famously said that if you can't explain something in simple terms, then you don't really understand it. And what you and I will all be doing for years to come is dealing with complexity, big projects, politics. A technical challenge, with not enough time to do something, not enough budget to do something. So lots of challenges.



I think it's always a struggle to reduce to something simple that you can understand and think: right, this is the essential point that we need to keep hold of. Everything else is kind of fluff and distraction.



So I would say my career in safety has been a constant effort to simplify and to understand the simple things that are important. And that's what we need to stick to. And again, all of you, whether you do safety or not, you're going to be dealing with complex systems. Otherwise, we're not needed as systems engineers.



'Decomposed' F1 Racing Car, Brooklands. Photo Simon Di Nucci.



Q&A (Part 6) will follow next week!



New to System Safety? Then start here. There’s more about The Safety Artisan here. Subscribe for free regular emails here.

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Simon Di Nucci https://www.safetyartisan.com/2021/07/28/reflections-on-a-career-in-safety-part-5/

Reflections on a Career in Safety, Part 4

In 'Reflections on a Career in Safety, Part 4', I want to talk about Consultancy, which is mostly what I've been doing for the last 20 years!



Consultancy



As I said near the beginning, I thought that in the software supportability team, we all wore the same uniform as our customers. We didn't cost them anything. We were free. We could turn up and do a job. You would think that would be an easy sell, wouldn't you?



Not a bit of it.  People want there to be an exchange of tokens. If we're talking about psychology, if something doesn't cost them anything, they think, well, it can't be worth anything. So we pay for something really does affect our perception of whether it's any good.



Photo by Cytonn Photography on Unsplash



So I had to go and learn a lot of sales and marketing type stuff in order to sell the benefits of bringing us in, because, of course, there was always an overhead of bringing new people into a program, particularly if they were going to start asking awkward questions, like how are we going to support this in service? How are we going to fix this? How is this going to work?



So I had to learn a whole new language and a whole new way of doing business and going out to customers and saying, we can help you, we can help you get a better result. Let's do this. So that was something new to learn. We certainly didn't talk about that at university.  Maybe you do more business focussed stuff these days. You can go and do a module, I don't know, in management or whatever; very, very useful stuff, actually. It's always good to be able to articulate the benefits of doing something because you've got to convince people to pay for it and make room for it.



Doing Too Little, or Too Much



And in safety, I’ve got two jobs.



First of all, I suppose it's the obvious one. Sometimes you go and see a client, they're not aware of what the law says they're supposed to do or they're not aware that there's a standard or a regulation that says they've got to do something – so they're not doing it. Maybe I go along and say, ah, look, you've got to do this. It's the law. This is what we need to do.



Photo by Quino Al on Unsplash



Then, there's a negotiation because the customer says, oh, you consultants, you're just making up work so you can make more money. So you've got to be able to show people that there's a benefit, even if it's only not going to jail. There's got to be a benefit. So you help the clients to do more in order to achieve success.



You Need to Do Less!



But actually, I spend just as much time advising clients to do less, because I see lots of clients doing things that appear good and sensible. Yes, they're done with all the right motivation. But you look at what they're doing and you say, well, this you're spending all this money and time, but it's not actually making a difference to the safety of the product or the process or whatever it is.



You're chucking money away really, for very little or no effect.  Sometimes people are doing work that actually obscures safety. They dive into all this detail and go, well, actually, you've created all this data that's got to be managed and that's actually distracting you from this thing over here, which is the thing that's really going to hurt people.



So, I spend my time helping people to focus on what's important and dump the comfort blanket, OK, because lots of times people are doing stuff because they've always done it that way, or it feels comforting to do something. And it's really quite threatening to them to say, well, actually, you think you're doing yourself a favor here, but it doesn't actually work. And that's quite a tough sell as well, getting people to do less.



Photo by Prateek Katyal on Unsplash



However, sometimes less is definitely more in terms of getting results.



Part 5 will follow next week!



New to System Safety? Then start here. There’s more about The Safety Artisan here. Subscribe for free regular emails here.

#Careerinsafety #ishealthandsafetyagoodcareer #ishseagoodcareer #issafetyagoodcareer #issafetymanagementagoodcareer #Lecture #Part4 #reflections #safetycareer #safetyguideforcareerandtechnicaleducation

Simon Di Nucci https://www.safetyartisan.com/2021/07/21/reflections-on-a-career-in-safety-part-4/

Reflections on a Career in Safety, Part 3

In 'Reflections on a Career in Safety, Part 3' I continue talking about different kinds of Safety, moving onto...



Projects and Products



Then moving on to the project side, where teams of people were making sure a new aeroplane, a new radio, a new whatever it might be, was going to work in service; people were going to be able to use it, easily, support it, get it replaced or repaired if they had to. So it was a much more technical job - so lots of software, lots of people, lots of process and more people.



Moving to the software team was a big shock to me. It was accidental. It wasn't a career move that I had chosen, but I enjoyed it when I got there.  For everything else in the Air Force, there was a rule. There was a process for doing this. There were rules for doing that. Everything was nailed down. When I went to the software team, I discovered there are no rules in software, there are only opinions.



The 'H' is software development is for 'Happiness'



So straight away, it became a very people-focused job because if you didn't know what you were doing, then you were a bit stuck.  I had to go through a learning curve, along with every other technician who was on the team. And the thing about software with it being intangible is that it becomes all about the process. If a physical piece of kit like the display screen isn't working, it's pretty obvious. It's black, it's blank, nothing is happening. It's not always obvious that you've done something wrong with software when you're developing it.



So we were very heavily reliant on process; again, people have got to decide what's the right process for this job? What are we going to do? Who's going to do it? Who's able to do it? And it was interesting to suddenly move into this world where there were no rules and where there were some prima donnas.



Photo by Sandy Millar on Unsplash



We had a handful of really good programmers who could do just about anything with the aeroplane, and you had to make the best use of them without letting them get out of control.  Equally, you had people on the other end of the scale who'd been posted into the software team, who really did not want to be there. They wanted to get their hands dirty, fixing aeroplanes. That's what they wanted to do. Interesting times.



From the software team, I moved on to big projects like Eurofighter, that's when I got introduced to:



Systems Engineering



And I have no problem with plugging systems engineering because as a safety engineer, I know if there is good systems engineering and good project management, I know my job is going to be so much easier. I’ve turned up on a number of projects as a consultant or whatever, and I say, OK, where's the safety plan? And they say, oh, we want you to write it. OK, yeah, I can do that. Whereas the project management plan or where's the systems engineering management plan?



If there isn't one or it's garbage – as it sometimes is – I’m sat there going, OK, my just my job just got ten times harder, because safety is an emergent property. So you can say a piece of kit is on or off. You can say it's reliable, but you can't tell whether it's safe until you understand the context. What are you asking it to do in what environment? So unless you have something to give you that wider and bigger picture and put some discipline on the complexity, it's very hard to get a good result.



Photo by Sam Moqadam on Unsplash



So systems engineering is absolutely key, and I'm always glad to work with the good systems engineer and all the artifacts that they've produced. That's very important. So clarity in your documentation is very helpful. Being , if you're lucky, at the very beginning of a program, you've got an opportunity to design safety, and all the other qualities you want, into your product. You've got an opportunity to design in that stuff from the beginning and make sure it's there, right there in the requirements.



Also, systems engineers doing the requirements, working out what needs to be done, what you need the product to do, and just as importantly, what you need it not to do, and then passing that on down the chain. That's very important. And I put in the title “managing at a distance” because, unlike in the operations world where you can say “that's broken, can you please go and fix it”.



Managing at a Distance



It's not as direct as that.  You're looking at your process, you're looking at the documentation, you're working with, again, lots and lots of people, not all of whom have the same motivation that you do.



Photo by Bonneval Sebastien on Unsplash



Industry wants to get paid. They want to do the minimum work to get paid, to maximize their profit. You want the best product you can get. The pilots want something that punches holes in the sky and looks flash and they don't really care much about much else, because they're quite inoculated to risk.



So you've got people with competing motivations and everything has got to be worked indirectly. You don't get to control things directly. You've got to try and influence and put good things in place, in almost an act of faith that, good things in place and good things will result.  A good process will produce a good product. And most of the time that's true. So (my last slide on work), I ended up doing consultancy, first internally and then externally.



Part 4 will follow next week!



New to System Safety? Then start here. There’s more about The Safety Artisan here. Subscribe for free regular emails here.

#Careerinsafety #ishealthandsafetyagoodcareer #ishseagoodcareer #issafetyagoodcareer #issafetymanagementagoodcareer #Lecture #Part3 #reflections #safetycareer #safetyguideforcareerandtechnicaleducation #SystemsEngineering

Simon Di Nucci https://www.safetyartisan.com/2021/07/14/reflections-on-a-career-in-safety-part-3/

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.



https://youtu.be/mSkxawC8d64

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.

#checklistforhazardidentification #explainhazardidentification #hazardidentification #hazardidentificationandmapping #hazardidentificationandprevention #hazardidentificationevaluationandcontrol #hazardidentificationexample #hazardidentificationinaviation #hazardidentificationinriskassessment #hazardidentificationincludes #hazardidentificationlist #hazardidentificationmainlyfocuson #hazardidentificationmanagement #hazardidentificationmeaning #hazardidentificationmethodshse #hazardidentificationtraining #hazardidentificationtutorial #hazardidentificationusingprimarysources #hazardidentificationvideo #hazardidentificationworkshop #methodsforhazardidentification #MilStd882E #PHI #PreliminaryHazardIdentification #Task201

Simon Di Nucci https://www.safetyartisan.com/2023/03/15/preliminary-hazard-identification-with-mil-std-882e/

Reflections on a Career in Safety, Part 2

In 'Reflections on a Career in Safety, Part 2' I move on to ...



Different Kinds of Safety



So I'm going to talk a little bit about highlights, that I hope you'll find useful.  I went straight from university into the Air Force and went from this kind of environment to heavy metal, basically.  I guess it's obvious that wherever you are if you're doing anything in industry, workplace health and safety is important because you can hurt people quite quickly. 



Workplace Health and Safety



In my very first job, we had people doing welding, high voltage electrics, heavy mechanical things; all built out of centimeter-thick steel. It was tough stuff and people still managed to bend it. So the amount of energy that was rocking around there, you could very easily hurt people.  Even the painters – that sounds like a safe job, doesn't it? – but aircraft paint at that time a cyanoacrylate. It was a compound of cyanide that we used to paint aeroplanes with.



All the painters and finishers had to wear head-to-toe protective equipment and breathing apparatus. If you're giving people air to breathe, if you get that wrong, you can hurt people quite quickly. So even managing the hazards of the workplace introduced further hazards that all had to be very carefully controlled.



Photo by Ömer Yıldız on Unsplash



And because you're in operations, all the decisions about what kind of risks and hazards you're going to face, they've already been made long before.  Decisions that were made years ago, when a new plane or ship or whatever it was, was being bought and being introduced . Decisions made back then, sometimes without realizing it, meant that we were faced with handling certain hazards and you couldn't get rid of them. You just had to manage them as best you could.



Overall, I think we did pretty well. Injuries were rare, despite the very exciting things that we were dealing with sometimes.  We didn't have too many near misses – not that we heard about anyway. Nevertheless, that was always there in the background. You're always trying to control these things and stop them from getting out of control.



One of the things about a workplace in operations and support, whether you're running a fleet of aeroplanes or you're servicing some kit for somebody else and then returning it to them, it tends to be quite a people-centric job. So, large groups of people doing the job, supervision, organization, all that kind of stuff.  And that can all seem very mundane, a lot of HR-type stuff. But it's important and it's got to be dealt with.



So the real world of managing people is a lot of logistics. Making sure that everybody you need is available to do the work, making sure that they’ve got all the kit, all the technical publications that tell them what to do, the information that they need.  It's very different to university – a lot of seemingly mundane stuff – but it's got to be got right because the consequences of stuffing up can be quite serious.



Safe Systems of Work



So moving on to some slightly different topics, when I got onto working with Aeroplanes, there was an emphasis on a safe system of work, because doing maintenance on a very complex aeroplane was quite an involved process and it had to be carefully controlled. So we would have what’s usually referred to as a Permit to Work system where you very tightly control what people are allowed to do to any particular plane. It doesn't matter whether it's a plane or a big piece of mining equipment or you're sending people in to do maintenance on infrastructure; whatever it might be, you've got to make sure that the power is disconnected before people start pulling it apart, et cetera, et cetera.



Photo by Leon Dewiwje on Unsplash



And then when you put it back together again, you've got to make sure that there aren't any bits leftover and everything works before you hand it back to the operators because they're going to go and do some crazy stuff with it. You want to make sure that the plane works properly. So there was an awful lot of process in that. And in those days, it was a paperwork process. These days, I guess a lot would be computerized, but it's still the same process.



If you muck up the process, it doesn't matter whether .  If you've got a rubbish process, you're going to get rubbish results and it doesn't change that. You just stuff up more quickly because you've got a more powerful tool. And for certain things we had to take, I've called it special measures. In my case, we were a strike squadron, which meant our planes would carry nuclear weapons if they had to.



Special Processes for Special Risks



So if the Soviets charged across the border with 20,000 tanks and we couldn't stop them, then it was time to use – we called them buckets of sunshine. Sounds nice, doesn't it? Anyway, so there were some fairly particular processes and rules for looking after buckets of sunshine. And I'm glad to say we only ever used dummies. But when you when the convoy arrived and yours truly has to sign for the weapon and then the team starts loading it, then that does concentrate your mind as an engineer. I think I was twenty-two, twenty-three at the time.  



Photo by Oscar Ävalos on Unsplash



Somebody on station stuffed up on the paperwork and got caught. So that was two careers of people my age, who I knew, that were destroyed straight away, just by not being too careful about what they were doing. So, yeah, that does concentrate the mind.  If you’re dealing with, let’s say you're in a major hazard facility, you're in a chemical plant where you've got perhaps thousands of tonnes of dangerous chemicals, there are some very special risk controls, which you have to make sure are going to work most of the time.



And finally, there is ‘airworthiness’: decisions about whether we could fly an aeroplane, even though some bits of it were not working. So that was a decision that I got to make once I got signed off to do it. But it's a team job. You talk to the specialists who say, this bit of the aeroplane isn't working, but it doesn't matter as long as you don't do “that”.



Photo by Eric Bruton on Unsplash



So you have to make sure that the pilots knew, OK, this isn't working.  This is the practical effect from your point of view. So you don't switch this thing on or rely on this thing working because it isn't going to work. There were various decisions about that were an exciting part of the job, which I really enjoyed.  That's when you had to understand what you were doing, not on your own, because there were people who'd been there a lot longer than me.  But we had to make things work as best we could – that was life.



Part 3 will follow next week!



New to System Safety? Then start here. There’s more about The Safety Artisan here. Subscribe for free regular emails here.

#Careerinsafety #ishealthandsafetyagoodcareer #ishseagoodcareer #issafetyagoodcareer #issafetymanagementagoodcareer #Lecture #Part2 #reflections #safetycareer #safetyguideforcareerandtechnicaleducation #SystemsEngineering

Simon Di Nucci https://www.safetyartisan.com/2021/07/07/reflections-on-a-career-in-safety-part-2/

Reflections on a Career in Safety, Part 1

This is Part 1 of my 'Reflections on a Career in Safety', from "Safety for Systems Engineering and Industry Practice", a lecture that I gave to the University of Adelaide in May 2021. My thanks to Dr. Kim Harvey for inviting me to do this and setting it up.



The Lecture, Part 1



Hi, everyone, my name Simon Di Nucci and I'm an engineer, I actually – it sounds cheesy - but I got into safety by accident. We'll talk about that later. I was asked to talk a little bit about career stuff, some reflections on quite a long career in safety, engineering, and other things, and then some stuff that hopefully you will find interesting and useful about safety work in industry and working for government.



Context: my Career Summary



I've got three areas to talk about, operations and support, projects and product development, and consulting.



I have been on some very big projects, Eurofighter, Future Submarine Programme, and some others that have been huge multi-billion-dollar programs, but also some quite small ones as well. They're just as interesting, sometimes more so. In the last few years, I've been working in consultancy. I have some reflections on those topics and some brief reflections on a career in safety.



Starting Out in the Air Force



So a little bit about my career to give you some context. I did 20 years in the Royal Air Force in the U.K., as you can tell from my accent, I'm not from around here. I started off fresh out of university, with a first degree in aerospace systems engineering. And then after my Air Force training, my first job was as an engineering manager on ground support equipment: in General Engineering Flight, it was called.



We had people looking after the electrical and hydraulic power rigs that the aircraft needed to be maintained on the ground. And we had painters and finishers and a couple of carpenters and a fabric worker and some metal workers and welders, that kind of stuff. So I went from a university where we were learning about all this high-tech stuff about what was yet to come in the aerospace industry. It was a bit of the opposite end to go to, a lot of heavy mechanical engineering that was quite simple.



And then after that, we had a bit of excitement because six weeks after I started, in my very first job, the Iraqis invaded Kuwait.  I didn't go off to war, thank goodness, but some of my people did. We all got ready for that: a bit of excitement.



Photo by Jacek Dylag on Unsplash



After that, I did a couple of years on a squadron, on the front line. We were maintaining and fixing the aeroplanes and looking after operations. And then from there, I went for a complete change. Actually, I did three years on a software maintenance team and that was a very different job, which I'll talk about later. I had the choice of two unpleasant postings that I really did not want, or I could go to the software maintenance team.



Into Software by accident as well!



I discovered a burning passion to do software to avoid going to these other places. And that's how I ended up there. I had three, fantastic years there and really enjoyed that. Then, I was thinking of going somewhere down south to be in the UK, to be near family, but we went further north. That's the way things happen in the military.



I got taken on as the rather grandly titled Systems and Software Specialist Officer on the Typhoon Field Team. The Eurofighter Typhoon wasn't in service at that point. (That didn't come in until 2003 when I was in my last Air Force job, actually.)  We had a big team of handpicked people who were there to try and make sure that the aircraft was supportable when it came into service.



One of the big things about the new aircraft was it had tons of software on board.  There were five million lines of code on board, which was a lot at the time, and a vast amount of data. It was a data hog; it ate vast amounts of data and it produced vast amounts of data and that all needed to be managed. It was on a scale beyond anything we'd seen before. So it was a big shock to the Air Force.



More Full-time Study



Photo by Mike from Pexels



Then after that, I was very fortunate.  (This is a picture of York, with the minister in the background.) I spent a year full-time doing the safety-critical systems engineering course at York, which was excellent.  It was a privilege to be able to have a year to do that full-time. I've watched a lot of people study part-time when they've got a job and a family, and it's really tough. So I was very, very pleased that I got to do that.



After that, I went to do another software job where this time we were in a small team and we were trying to drive software supportability into new projects coming into service, all kinds of stuff, mainly aircraft, but also other things as well.  That was almost like an internal consultancy job. The only difference was we were free, which you would think would make it easier to sell our services. But the opposite is the case.



Finally, in my last Air Force job, I was part of the engineering authority looking after the Typhoon aircraft as it came into service, which is always a fun time. We just got the plane into service. And then one of the boxes that I was responsible for malfunctioned. So the undercarriage refused to come down on the plane, which is not what you want. We did it did get down safely in the end, but then the whole fleet was grounded and we had to fix the problem. So some more excitement there. Not always of the kind that you want, but there we go. So that took me up to 2006.



At that point, I transitioned out of the Air Force and I became a consultant



So, I always regarded consultants with a bit of suspicion up until then, and now I am one. I started off with a firm called QinetiQ, which is also over here. And I was doing safety mainly with the aviation team. But again, we did all sorts, vehicles, ships, network logistics stuff, all kinds of things. And then in 2012, I joined Frazer-Nash in order to come to Australia.



So we appeared in Australia in November 2012. And we've been here in Adelaide all almost all that time. And you can't get rid of us now because we're citizens. So you're stuck with us. But it's been lovely. We love Adelaide and really enjoy, again, the varied work here.



Adelaide CBD, photo by Simon Di Nucci



Part 2 will follow next week!



New to System Safety? Then start here. There's more about The Safety Artisan here. Subscribe for free regular emails here.

#Careerinsafety #ishealthandsafetyagoodcareer #ishseagoodcareer #issafetyagoodcareer #issafetymanagementagoodcareer #Lecture #Part1 #reflections #safetycareer #safetyguideforcareerandtechnicaleducation #SystemsEngineering

Simon Di Nucci https://www.safetyartisan.com/2021/06/30/reflections-on-a-career-in-safety-part-1/

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 seeA 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 andsafety 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 otherActs 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 andexamination.



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 toSection 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 applyTo designers.To manufacturers.To importers.To suppliers.And to those installing, constructing, Or commissioning. Substances andStructures.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 . 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’ video is here.

#atworkhealthandsafety #guidetowhsact #howdoeswhswork #howtoworkinhealthandsafety #projectworkhealthandsafetyrequirements #whatarewhsstandards #whatisthemeaningofworkhealthandsafety #whatiswhsandwhyisitimportant #whatmustemployeesdoforhealthandsafety #whatwhsmeans #whatwhsstandfor #WHS #whs2011regulations #whsdutyofcare #whshazardsandrisks #whyarewhspoliciesimportant #WorkHealthandSafety #workhealthandsafety2012 #workhealthandsafetybill #workhealthandsafetybill2011 #workhealthandsafetyemployerresponsibilities #workhealthandsafetyguidelines #workhealthandsafetyobjectives #workhealthandsafetypurpose #workhealthandsafetyquestions #workhealthandsafetystrategy

Simon Di Nucci https://www.safetyartisan.com/2023/02/01/introduction-to-australian-work-health-safety/