Safety engineering competence

Finally, there is a general lack of expertise in the area of software system safety. Not only are there grossly insufficient numbers of qualified system safety engineers with software safety credentials but also very few recognized textbooks, seminars, university programs, or competent consultants are available. The lack of technical competence in this area seems to span the entire system safety community. 

Safety professional staff Did the safety staff have adequate professional qualifications Did safety professionals have professional registration (certified safety professionals or professional engineers) Did safety professionals have the educational backgrounds and credentials necessary for technical competence and credibility in the organization Did they have an appropriate mix of safety, engineering, human factors, and management skills and knowledge Did the safety staff... 

Qualifications for safety engineers in process applications, machine applications, hardware, or software that demonstrates competence in safety lifecycle activities. These qualifications are administered by the non-profit CFSE Governance managed by a global consortium of vendor, user, integrator, and consultant companies. 

When it comes to safety-critical systems, engineering competence is basic and essential however, there are weaknesses with regard to providing a measure of a company s engineering competence that need to be addressed. There are also issues over how safety work should be outsourced when the need arises (or even i/it should). 

Technical competence (MODISA 2004) needs to be understood and measurable. The type of technical competence needs to be determined is it technical competence in Safety Engineering practices perhaps with fomnal qualirications Or technical competence in the domain (or with similar technology) developed through experience How can technical competence be determined and how much is enough ... 

In this paper the word limitation has been used as a general term to describe any difference fi om the ideal state of the evidence. Counter-evidence is defined in Defence Standard 00-56 as evidence with the potential to undermine safety claims. As Defence Standard 00-56 requires a pro-active search for counterevidence, a limitation needs to be considered as possible counter-evidence unless or until it can be shown that the safety claims are not undermined by that limitation. Suppose for example that a test has failed, and as a result a fault has been found in the software, this limitation (in the correctness of the software) might be counter-evidence. On the other hand if the fault is in some functionality that is not safety related, then it is likely that, fi om a safety perspective, the existence of tire fault is acceptable, and so this limitation is not counter-evidence. Any member of the project who is competent in a particular process area coidd record limitations and assess their impact in relation to the scope of that process. However, counterevidence is wholly related to flie safety of the product and must be assessed by a competent safety professional. Hence it is important that limitations are accurately and transparently recorded in the evidence generated by all of flie project processes and identified in the summary process documents, so that they can be assessed by a safety engineer. 

Establish individual competency Safety engineers of rhe organization to get... 

A position paper issued in 2005 and titled Auditor Competency for Assessing Occupational Health Safety Management Systems is available on the Internet. Sponsoring organizations are the American Society of Safety Engineers, the American Industrial Hygiene Association, Board of Certified Safety Professionals, and the American Board of Industrial Hygiene. 

Competence of the project teams No experience with the safety development based on lEC 61508 in the past however some of them have experience with safety development. Most of them got 1-2 days training regarding functional safety and workshops organized by a certified functional safety engineer... 

HD 19/15 continues with the advice from previous Road Safety Audit standards regarding the training and experience requirements for Road Safety Audit Observers, Members and Team Leaders (see Chapter 3). It is at the discretion of the Project Sponsor whether to implement these requirements to the letter. However, at least one member of the audit team must hold a Certificate of Competency. The implication of this is that the training and experience requirements become mandatory for at least one member of the Road Safety Audit Team. These include 10 days formal training, 2 years (recent) collision investigation/road safety engineering experience, and five Road Safety Audits completed in the past 24 months. 

TMS Consultancy has also worked with Transport Malta and the Ministry of Transport and Public works in Cyprus to award Certificates of Competency in a further two EU member states. In Malta, candidates attended a 10-day road safety engineering/Road Safety Audit course that included a collision investigation assignment (Figure 4.4). In Cyprus, delegates attended 5 days of safety in design training, and took a short examination at the end of the week. 

In Spain, the first Certificate of Competence training course was held during the summer of 2013. Twenty delegates attended a very practical Road Safety Audit course that took place over 10 weeks, involving around 60 contact hours. Delegates pre-qualified with experience in design, road safety engineering and collision analysis. 

One of the team members has to hold a Road Safety Audit Certificate of Competency, and the team leader must be a chartered engineer with at least 7 years experience in design, road safety engineering and collision investigation. 

The Fundamental Principle. The engineer as a professional is dedicated to improving competence, service, fairness, and the exercise of well-founded judgment in the practice of engineering for the public, employers, and clients with fundamental concern for the public health and safety in the pursuit of this practice. 

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