Ra

Safety Case Guideline

Engineers Australia
Engineering Guidelines Online

Risk Engineering Society Seminar

28th July 2003
Richard Robinson BE BA FIEAust
Member
Guideline Drafting Committee
 Guideline Objective

To explain and enhance the rapidly

developing concept of a safety case in
Victorian jurisdictions in a manner
useful to engineers and the society
they support.
Traditional Safety Case Concept
Board

Safety Safety Business Financial

Case CEO
Audit Case Audit

Middle
Management

Business
Units
 Victorian Safety Case Regimes

• Offshore safety cases " Petroleum #submerged

lands$ Management of Safety on Offshore
Facilities Regulations #1996$
• Gas Safety #Safety Case$ Regulations #1999$
• Electrical Safety #Management$ Regulations
#1999$
• Occupational Health & Safety #Major Hazard
Facilities$ Regulations #2000$
• Rail Safety #regulations 1998$
Australian Safety Case Regimes

• Offshore safety cases " most states

• Gas Safety " NSW
• Hazardous Industries " NSW
• Railways " NSW
• Mines " NSW
• Mines " WA and others
 Legal Implications

Once established, a safety case

effectively manifests itself as a contract
between the operator and the
regulator. A breach is serious.

Practical consequence is that the

adverserial legal system is driving
safety cases towards being liability
management tools.
 Legal Implications
For senior management and board members
at least, liability management is often
identical to consequence management.

NSW Judge to engineers:

“What do you mean you didn’t think it could
happen; there are seven dead”

That is, after the event, likelihood is hard to

defend, it has happened.
 Legal Implications

Corporate
Board legal sign off

Policy
Requested Resources
$, time & people

In house Middle management

legal advice assessement and
attempted feedback
 Risk

Risk is all about uncertainty

It is a human construct peculiar to time

and place

It has become a form of ‘due diligence’

currency
 Paradigm

A paradigm is a universally recognised

knowledge system that for a time
provides model problems and
solutions to a community of
practitioners
 0. Legal
The rule of law is the base case.

When everything else fails, we appear

to revert to this.

Thus, in a very real sense, all the other

paradigms represent methods of
satisfying legal outcomes in the event
of the risk occurring.
 1. Insurance

In modern world empirical loss history has

become a less certain method for predicting
future

Insurable component a small part of actual

losses #typically less than 10%$
 2. Bottom Up

• Classical engineering approaches:

• HazOp, FMECA, QRA etc.

• Control solutions and risk registers

are specific and powerful decision
making tools

• Not always in context

 3. Top Down

• SWOT, Vulnerability analyses

• Identifies areas of strategic concern but

not necessarily specific solutions
 Sample Vulnerability Table

CRITICAL SUCCESS FACTORS

Threats Reputation Operability Staff
Technical xx xx xx
Community - - xx
Political (change of x x x
government)
Financial xxx xxx x
Natural Events x xxx xxx
 Augmented SWOT Process
External/Internal
LIABILITIES Factors REWARDS

Threats Opportunities

Vulnerabilities Strategy Value Addeds

Weaknesses Strengths

Organisation
 Ra
2

4. Risk as variance
Market Risk #boom/bust$
Standard deviation deemed to equal risk

Pure Speculative
Risk Risk

Rate of Return
 5. Best Practice

• Solution based rather than hazard base

• Look at good ideas used by others and

see if any reason not to do likewise

• Powerful in a common law due

diligence sense
 Best Practice Approaches
Credible Hazards,
Vulnerabilities or Pathogens

Hazard Assessment Control Options

Assess Consequences Risk Mitigate Consequences
Estimate Likelihoods Decrease Likelihood

Judgements
Statute, TLRS, ALARP
Common Law, Due Diligence etc

Actions
amd Residual Risk Allocation
 6. Simulations

Modelling a complex system in a virtual

reality environment and playing endless
“what if ” scenarios.

Crisis Management Simulations

 7. Risk Culture

Pathological Bureaucratic Generative

Culture Culture Culture

Don’t want to know May not find out Actively seek it

Messengers are ‘shot’ Messengers are Messengers are

listened to if they trained and rewarded
arrive
 House painting
Percentage who would refuse to help the boss

100%
75%
50%
25%
0%

Australia
Netherlands
United Kingdom
West Germany
USA
Italy
Japan
Canada
Poland
Pakistan
Mexico
Hong Kong
Malaysia
Egypt
Singapore
Indonesia
Nepal
China
An Integrated Concept of Risk
Board and
CEO (Policy)
Vulnerability Analyses, Crisis Top
A SWOT Analyses etc, Management Down
Audits, Underwriting
E Assessments,
1 5
Availability
AS4360
Assessments.
OHS Acts
Environmental
QRA,HazOps, Losses, Incidents Acts
Operations &
Maintenance
FMECA, RCM, and Breakdowns Corporations Law
Job Safety Analysis, Fire Fighting, First Aid, Common Law

Cause-Consequence Legal Actions

Modelling etc Insurance Payments
IEC61508
Pre-event Event Post-event
Horizon
Strategic Tactical
 Risk Roles

Corporate or Institutional Risk Management Public Risk Management

Indirect Government Control (Regulation) Direct Government Control

Time

Corporate Corporate Public Government Loss of Public

Hazard Prevention Crisis Emergency Crisis Confidence -
Failure Management Response Management Change of
Failure Failure Failure Government?
 Risk Management Matrix
Technique>> Expert reviews Facilitated Selective
Risk Management Paradigm workshops interviews
0 The rule of law Yes Yes Yes
(Legal opinions) (Arbitration, moot (Royal
courts) Commissions)
1 Insurance approaches Yes Yes Yes
(Risk surveys, (Risk profiling (especially moral
actuarial studies) sessions) risk)
2 Asset based, 'bottom-up' Yes Yes Difficult
approaches (QRA, availability (HazOps,
audits) FMECA, RCM etc)
3 Threat based 'top-down' Difficult Yes Yes
approaches in isolation (Vulnerability (Interviews)
workshops)
4 Business (upside AND Yes Difficult Yes
downside) approaches (Actuarial studies) in isolation (Fact finding tours)
5 Solution based ‘best practice’ Difficult to be Difficult to be Yes
approaches comprehensive comprehensive (Fact finding tours)
6 The development of Yes Yes Difficult
biological, systemic mutual (Computer (Crisis
feedback loop paradigms simulations) simulations)
7 The development of risk Yes Difficult Yes
culture concepts (Quality audits) (Interviews)
 Conclusions
• Safety cases are moving from a strictly
technical safety management tools to an
approach that includes liability
management devices
• They have become legal argument as to
why there are no outstanding, sensible
precautions #liability management$
• This may require several arguments and
often requires lawyers.
 Legal Standing of Guideline

• Superior to a standard when dealing with

an expert matter considered to be in the
domain of engineers

• Powerful when no other standard or

guideline for engineers exists.
 Ra 2

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