Managing Technical Safety

By robustly managing Technical Safety, we seek to minimise the chances of an asset causing ‘harm’ (to people, the environment or commercially) throughout its lifecycle. 

The lecture will outline a concise engineering framework to facilitate the delivery of favourable Technical Safety outcomes whilst also supporting Reliable, Available & Maintainable (RAM) assets … so win-win?  

The session will also consider the regulatory frameworks in which we operate and examine what can happen if Technical Safety is compromised. 

Legal requirements across the globe require us to manage the PERSONAL SAFETY of ourselves and others AND the TECHNICAL SAFETY of the equipment / assets we support and utilise. 

Technical safety is often given industry specific labels (Nuclear Safety, Process Safety, Railway Safety, Aircraft Safety etc) but it’s useful to think in more general terms and define Technical Safety as a means of managing our assets with the goal of minimising the likelihood of them to cause ‘harm’. Harm to people, harm to the environment or commercial harm. 

The UK HSE’s Plan-Do-Check-Act model (captured in HSG65) provides a robust model for managing most things .. Technical Safety included. Further useful frameworks to draw on include those for managing Process Safety (developed by the Energy Institute & EEMUA) and the standards aimed at risk-based asset management (ISO-55001 and the underlying guides produced by the Institute of Asset Management – IAM). All this great guidance distils down to the following Technical Safety Management threads.