Safety engineering is the process of designing workplaces to prevent accidents. Engineering Safety Concepts provides detailed approaches and modes for accident reduction by using a risk management process to identify and “design out” hazards. Accidents can and do happen.
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What is the difference between safety engineering and safety management?
What Is Safety Engineering? – While safety managers are the ones that enforce the day to day safety practices, training, and prevention efforts, safety engineers are the ones that design the systems, technology, environments, and processes that allow safety managers to do their jobs effectively.
- They close the gap between safety leaders, research and development, and engineering to allow every area to succeed.
- It’s a complicated, difficult responsibility because multiple disciplines must be taken into account.
- It’s not just a matter of understanding how a proposed process will work, but also how it affects other areas of operation, structural components, and employees.
There’s much data collection, research, and analyzing required for successful safety engineering. In addition, safety engineers must also operate with the foresight to determine potential problems with their systems in the future. In many cases, safety engineers are often the reaction to a disaster or incident.
What is the importance of safety in engineering?
The purpose of safety engineering is to control risk by reducing or completely eliminating it. It also aims to reduce the rate of failures and if failure does occur, it is not life threatening.
Is risk management and safety management the same?
Probably the biggest difference between the two disciplines is finance. While Risk Management always considers the cost of financing the loss, including the cost to mitigate the loss, safety often does not.
What is a factor of safety in engineering?
Geotechnical Factor of Safety and Risk – KCB Factor of Safety (FoS) is a measure used in engineering design to represent how much greater the resisting capacity of a structure or component is relative to an assumed load. With respect to slope stability, FoS is the ratio of shear resistance to driving force along a potential failure plane.
A FoS greater than 1.0 implies the available shear strength to resist failure is greater than the driving force to initiate failure. There is no means of quantitatively measuring the “real” FoS of a particular slope at a given time. Therefore, FoS of a slope is estimated based on industry standard analytical methods with assumed material parameters inferred from various data sources (laboratory, drilling, empirical correlations) under various loading conditions (e.g.
static, post-earthquake, construction). The FoS is estimated for a number of slip surfaces for a given analysis scenario ranging from deep seated (e.g. through foundation) or shallow, sloughing failures – refer to the image below. Slip surface examples In cases where shallow sloughing failures have the lowest FoS, they are typically ignored when selecting the critical FoS for a dam because the consequence of the slough is not significant with respect to the stability of the structure.
FoS is used by designers, dam owners and regulators to quantify dam safety, but it is not directly correlated to the risk (i.e. the likelihood and consequence) of failure. For example, a dam with a FoS of 1.4 does not necessarily have a higher probability of failure than a dam with a FoS of 1.6. In their presentation at the Australian National Committee on Large Dams (ANCOLD) 2017 conference, Herza et al.
agreed that FoS and probability of failure have a weak correlation: “Interestingly, the minimum recommended factors of safety used today do not take into account the potential consequences of dam failure or the uncertainties in input values, and are based on the loading conditions only.
Yet, several authors have demonstrated that a higher factor of safety does not necessarily result in a lower probability of failure, as the analysis also depends on the quality of investigations, testing, design and construction.” The confidence in FoS values can vary significantly, depending on the uncertainty of assumed material parameters and the engineers’ experience in defining assumptions and interpreting the results.
As these factors change, the risk associated with a specific FoS value can vary between sites, dam owners, or even different segments of a single dam or slope. A dam or slope with a lower FoS derived from analyses with a high degree of confidence and reliability may be “safer” or “lower risk” than a dam with a higher FoS derived from less reliable analyses.
- For this reason, it is necessary to involve experienced dam design professionals in the material characterization, analysis, sensitivity and interpretation of the results.
- The application of FoS criteria by engineers in dam design has evolved over time and is being reviewed by professional associations following recent tailings dam failures.
Accepted industry standards, such as Canadian Dam Association Guidelines, will continue to recommend minimum FoS values for use in design. However, the selection of appropriate FoS values, in addition to complying with accepted practice and regulations, must be supported by a comprehensive dam safety risk management system.
- This approach is becoming recognized across the industry and should be adopted for all active projects.
- CB engineers have worked on the design of tailings, hydro power and water dams since the company was founded in 1950.
- We helped to revolutionize the design of modern tailings storage facilities and our engineering approach continues to be the hallmark of international practice.
Today, we provide solutions for some of the largest, most technically challenging tailings storage facilities in the world. We can help you determine the geological and geotechnical setting of your tailings facility, and design and monitor the construction of your tailings impoundment and related infrastructure.
- In addition, we have been actively involved in preparing dam safety guidelines with industry associations, including the Canadian Dam Association, Engineers and Geoscientists BC, and the International Commission on Large Dams.
- For further information on Factor of Safety and risk, contact us at,
- Reference: Herza, J., M.
Ashley and J. Thorp.2017. “,” in ANCOLD 2017 Conference, October 26-27, 2017. Hobart, TAS, Australia. : Geotechnical Factor of Safety and Risk – KCB
What is a good safety factor in engineering?
General Recommendations
| Applications | Factor of Safety – FOS – |
|---|---|
| For use with highly reliable materials where loading and environmental conditions are not severe and where weight is an important consideration | 1.3 – 1.5 |
| For use with reliable materials where loading and environmental conditions are not severe | 1.5 – 2 |
What is the difference between risk engineering and risk management?
Introduction Risk Engineering is a set of approaches that compliments other forms of risk management, including enterprise and project risk management. AS/NZS ISO 31000:2018 defines risk as “effect of uncertainty on objectives” and risk management as “coordinated activities to direct and control an organisation with regard to risk”.
- Therefore it is implied that engineering risk is the effect of uncertainty on engineering objectives.
- If we accept that risk engineering is a specialised form of risk management, then to be consistent with ISO 31000, risk engineering could be defined as coordinated activities to direct and control an organisation with regard to engineering risk.
Risk engineering can also be defined as the identification, prioritisation and control of the material risks which may impact engineering outcomes, processes and systems, cost, schedule, quality and safety, It involves the application of engineering methods to deal with all forms of uncertainty (including loss and opportunity).
- Risk engineering encompasses the entire management lifecycle from concept, design and construction; through operations management; to decommissioning and disposal or re-engineering, repurposing, reuse and recycling.
- Risk engineering is informed by the requirements of the specific context, broader corporate environment and management organisation.
It is also shaped by inputs from other internal and external stakeholders including relevant or involved engineering disciplines, Risk engineering in projects In the context of projects, risk engineering is commonly associated with uncertain events or conditions within the project scope that, if they eventuate, could have a negative impact on the project’s objectives, or expose the project to regulatory non-compliance,
At the project concept stage, identified risks can be dealt with as opportunities to improve the project’s scope to be more resilient or achieve more beneficial outcomes. Generally, risk engineering should be performed using a system framework that accounts for uncertainties in modelling, behaviour and prediction, and interaction between the system’s components.
The framework should also assess impact on the system and its surrounding environment. Risk engineering elements Typical elements of risk engineering include:
Safety assurance Safety in design (SID) Process safety Systems assurance Fault analysis Reliability engineering Resilience engineering Hazardous operations studies (HazOp, HazID) Probabilistic risk determination (QRA)
Some specific tasks that might be involved in risk engineering are:
Reviewing and influencing project proposals Investigations, reporting and appearing as expert witnesses e.g. in court, before royal commissions, on expert panels Raising public awareness of risk issues in engineering contexts e.g. by presenting conference papers, publishing in journals, contributing to communities of practice and bodies of knowledge, posting on social media Advocating for improved engineering practices to increase safety, reliability and resilience.
Context Risk engineering can vary depending on the context where it is applied, including different project fields, locations and environments, or engineering disciplines, For example, in a chemical engineering context, risk engineering might involve the application of quantitative risk assessment methods to consider the likelihood and consequence of hazards or events, and developing models to represent the behaviour of systems, events or scenarios of interest.
- In an environmental engineering context, risk engineering might also involve investigating how to reduce the existential risk posed by the effects of climate change to the ongoing existence of flora, fauna and humans in various socio-economic groups.
- In product development risk engineering workshop to improve equipment performance by application of tools like failure mode, effects and criticality analysis (FMECA).
The insurance industry employs risk engineering principles to identify and reduce loss exposures of industrial plant. Sources The content on this page was primarily sourced from:
Webinar titled ‘Perspectives on Risk: Engineers, frameworks and new ways of thinking’, delivered to REBOK Community on 29 May 2018 by Warren Black, Principal and Founder, Complexus Material supplied by Brian Njamba, MBA, Meng (Oil & Gas), BEng (Chemical) (Hons) Material supplied by Ian Thomas, BScHons(ChemEng), MEngSci(EnvEng), FIChemE, FIEAust, FRACI, FSIA, CEng, CPEng, CChem, RSP(Aust) Peer review by Geoff Hurst, President RES, FIEAust CPENG CHOHSP Input from Kevin Foster, 24 June 2020.
What is the difference between safety and EHS?
What is the difference between EHS and HSE? – The two terms are often used interchangeably, but there are some subtle differences. EHS stands for environment, health, and safety, while HSE stands for health, safety, and environment. The main difference is that EHS includes a wider range of issues, such as workplace safety and exposure to hazardous materials.
What is the difference between safety management and quality management?
Integrity-rooted Aerodrome Compliance & Safeguarding Leader within the Aviation Industry – Published Mar 25, 2017 A classic question thrown at any Quality/Safety specialist often confused with complexity & technical jargon. The thing is as the famous quote goes “If you cannot explain it simply enough, you don’t know what your talking” true it is! (in Yoda voice) its always best to keep things simple and sweet, So here we go, the difference between a Quality Management System (QMS) and a Safety Management System (SMS) The Simple take The main difference is that the SMS focuses on Harazd Identification,Risk mitigation and remedial action as opposed to a QMS which focuses on Policies,Procedures and tools which meets or exceeds the customer expectations of a product.
