System safety professional organizations

System Safety professionals shall undertake, and encourage their employees to further their education, become registered and certified by appropriate legal and professional authorities at the earliest possible date, to join and participate in appropriate professional organizations and to attend and present papers at professional and technical Society meetings. 

System Safety professionals shall associate only with reputable persons and organizations. 

System Safety professionals may, without compensation, perform professional services which are advisory in nature for civic, charitable, religious or nonprofit organizations. 

SECTION 6—System Safety Professionals Shall Associate only with Reputable Persons or Organizations. 

The end product is put into operation during this phase. Whether the end product is a facility, a piece of operating equipment, a tool, or a service, the entire effort of the system safety process will be realized during and throughout the operations phase. If the end user is an internal organization, the system safety professional has an opportunity to closely observe product operation and to make subsequent evaluation of the risks associated with that operation. However, if the end user is an external agency, there is seldom an opportunity to conduct operational evaluations of risk. Either way, the proof is in the pudding and the system safety efforts prior to the operational phase should therefore be as complete as possible. 

Because of the variances in safety cultures and the resources available, it is folly to suggest that an incident investigation system could be crafted that would universally apply in all organizations. Guidance is given for a safety professional to assess that which is attainable and to draft an incident investigation system that relates realistically to organizational culture and sophistication. 

Discussions of achievements with safety professionals whose oiganiza-tions had top scores did not produce any surprises. Incident investigation for hazard identification and analysis gets done best where the organization s culture includes accountability for superior performance. Here is an aggregate Mst of the conoments made in discussions with safety professionals in those entities with the best incident investigation systems ... 

In a form appropriate to the organization in which a safety professional provides counsel, a system of the sort outhned in this National Safety Council pubhcation should result in focusing on actual causal factors and on the development of effective corrective actions. For those who make incident investigations infrequently, a modification of the Guide for Identifying Causal Factors and Corrective Actions would serve as a valuable memory jogger. Such a Guide is included in this chapter. 

Safety professionals must accept that the quality of the hazards management decisions made in an organization is impacted directly by the validity of the information they provide through their performance measurement systems. Their ability to provide accurate information to be used in the decision-making process is a measure of their effectiveness. 

Professional System Safety and Related Societies and Organizations... 

The Society is a worldwide organization with members from more than 20 countries outside the United States. Each year the Society sponsors an International System Safety Conference and exhibition, which is attended by hundreds of safety professionals and others. 

Founded in 1911, ASSE is the world s oldest and largest professional safety organization. Its 33,000 members manage, supervise, and consult on safety, health, and environmental issues in industry, insurance, government, and education. ASSE has 12 divisions and 148 chapters in the US. and abroad. It also has 64 student sections. The engineering Division is most closely related to System Safety. 

A nonprofit organization organized in 1962 that is dedicated to supporting the safety professional in the application of Systems Engineering and Systems Management to the process of hazard, safety, and risk analysis to identify, assess, and control associated hazards while designing or modifying systems, products, or services. 

The CPSI was established in 2003 after inputs from various Canadian health care professional organizations and federal, provincial, and territorial ministries of health [10]. It is an independent organization and promotes solutions and collaboration among governments and stakeholders to improve patient safety. The main areas of improvemenf are education, commuiucation, system innovation, regulatory affairs, and research. 

An international, nonprofit organization of approximately 1600 members (in 2003) in the United States and throughout 20 countries around the world. The SSS is dedicated to the safety of systems, products, and services. Originally organized in 1962, it was incorporated in 1973 and has its headquarters in the Washington, DC area. Active chapters are organized to promote the system safety philosophy and further professional development. Their journal, Hazard Prevention, is published on a quarterly basis and features articles on current developments in the system safety profession. 

The ASSE is an international organization with over 30,000 members (as of 2004) in the United States and in selected countries such as England and Saudi Arabia, where numerous American safety professionals work and live. Organized in 1911 and incorporated in 1915, it is one of the oldest sustaining professional safety membership organizations in the United States. Through its many Counsels, the ASSE is an excellent source of information on a wide variety of safety and health topics, including system safety. Their monthly journal. Professional Safety, often includes articles on the subject of system safety analysis. 

---