Role of Safety and Product Integrity

The challenge faced by safety professionals continues to grow in complexity driven by factors such as larger more sophisticated systems, environmental issues, legal ramifications, moral concerns, and an ever-increasing desire to inch closer and closer towards achieving the goal of “zero-defects”. The strive for process improvement is on a continuum and the desire for process excellence has become more than just a fashionable obsession. Arguably a more sophisticated means to capture the safety efforts is required. Over the last few years there has been a trend towards making safety regulations less prescriptive and be more goal oriented. Are goal-based safety regulations truly a step forward? Although ‘Safety Case’ is stated as a requirement in many safety standards, should it be included as an explicit requirement? Let's take a closer look at what is a Safety Case. According to one of the definitions employed in the Industry, a Safety Case is, “A documented body of evidence that provides a convincing and valid argument that a system is adequately safe for a given application in a given environment”. This may be a starting point in the attempt to define and describe a safety case.