Safety engineering with COTS components

In this article we explore the application of an integrated approach to safety engineering in which assurance drives the engineering process. The paper reports on the outcome of a case study on a live industrial project with a view to evaluate: its suitability for application in a real-world safety engineering setting; its benefits and limitations in counteracting some of the difficulties of safety engineering with (COTS) components across supply chains; and, its effectiveness in generating evidence which can contribute directly to the construction of safety cases.