[SystemSafety] Making Standards available .....

[nfr]

Michael,

You say:
and – if we have the time available to teach functional safety – we should be introducing practical techniques for developing safe systems (and discussing various case studies).

I have found that a problem of considerable magnitude in the “education” of students in functional safety is that it is not education at all. It is training, based almost entirely on techniques. Students could usefully be introduced to techniques but, mainly, they need to UNDERSTAND, and, therefore, to have a sound foundation of PRINCIPLES.

Too much decision making in our field is done by people who lack understanding and rely almost entirely on techniques. If our students are to do better than that, and to improve practice in the field, they need to be taught not just practice but also principles and, indeed, how to base the choice of techniques on principles.

Felix.


On 14 May 2016, at 08:16, Michael J. Pont <M.Pont at SafeTTy.net<mailto:M.Pont at SafeTTy.net>> wrote:

My summary of this discussion.

We have a list made up of people who are interested in functional safety and in “making the world a safer place”.

It has been proposed that – to help make the world a safer place – we should:

1.
give students free access to standards (such as IEC 61508);

2.
reduce the price of key textbooks;

3.
agree a list of material that students need to know.

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Personally, I don’t think “1” is going to happen, and I’m not sure that it would contribute very much to the “safer world” goal even if it did.

[Let’s stick with IEC 61508.  I think many students would be put off by the standard (it’s hardly a page turner).  We want to inspire these students!]

In my view, students can deal with the standards after graduation, and – if we have the time available to teach functional safety – we should be introducing practical techniques for developing safe systems (and discussing various case studies).  If lower-cost textbooks help with this, then this can be no bad thing.

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It seems to me that one of the most influential “standards” that has emerged in recent years is MISRA C.  The standard is not free (but neither is it expensive).   It has (in my view) made a positive contribution to the goal of making the world a safer place.

MISRA C is (of course) a coding standard.  What would also be useful would be a similar, pragmatic document that discussed design guidelines for software in safety-related systems.  We also need a document that describes how to record safety requirements and system requirements.

This (in my view) is the kind of material that we should be teaching our students.

If the documents proved to be useful then they could also form the foundation for future standards (just as MISRA C is referenced in existing standards).

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Members of this list could perhaps make a useful contribution to the development of such documents?

There would be costs involved in this (I think we’d need to start by getting round a table).

Would anyone have any interest in getting involved?

Michael.

Michael J. Pont
SafeTTy Systems Ltd.
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