Ensuring supplier safety analysis is not performed in isolation! The gulf between the Project Safety Engineer and the front line user

This paper will explore, through use of a case study, the organisational difficulties experienced by Project Safety Engineers in determining whether software faults analysed in isolation could result in credible hazards or flight safety risks to users on the front line. The author has experience of defence projects where associated hazard identification and management activities have been complicated by ineffective or inexperienced Project Safety Committees. The aim of this paper is to identify where potential risks exist in Project Safety Committee management and to offer recommendations for improvement in order to increase the efficiency and effectiveness of the committee in determining credible platform-level hazards and consequent accidents. HP is the largest supplier of software intensive programmes to the UK MoD and as such, is represented at Project Safety Committees across a range of prime, sub-contactor and partnership capacities. The author is the Project Safety Engineer for HP´s AMPA Programme and has been tasked with production of the AMPA Safety Case.