[SystemSafety] A Fire Code for Software?

[Andy Ashworth]

		I have experienced this difference of appproach very recently on a major infra-structure project. The project in question involved thedesign and construction of a 13km light-rail line with a tunnel section, 10 surface stations, 3 sub-surface stations, and a maintenance depot / yard. The engineering members of the project management team were largely civil engineers with experience of tunneling and permanent way. 
The project schedule assumed that the overall project could be delivered based on delivery of discrete components. There was no consideration of how the components would be integrated to achieve customer requirements. Safety assurance was meant to be against IEC 61508, however the civil engineering types had no awareness of this standard and planned all tasks based on post-design safety assurance through testing. For a civil engineer, there is little or no need for them to consider integrated system behaviour - a tunnel, a bridge, or any other structure is largely passive when it comes to failure modes; whereas functional safety requires a more pro-active consideration of how things work and how they fail. 
Until safety and the role of systems engineering is better understood throughout the whol engineering community, there will be differences in approach - essentially civil and mechanical engineers use design codes / standards that give appropriate margins in loading of structures - there is no need to consider further the failure modes of a bridge or structure, the code/standard has already done this. If you have “hardcore died-in-the-wool” civil engineers in all project management roles, it can be extremely difficult and stressful to educate them of the need to consider how systems work.
This project, and prior experience in similar environments, had made me question my role in engineering.
Andy
		

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From: paul_e.bennett at topmail.co.uk
Sent: Thursday, March 8, 2018 07:31
Subject: Re: [SystemSafety] A Fire Code for Software?
To:  <systemsafety at lists.techfak.uni-bielefeld.de>


On 08/03/2018 at 6:12 AM, "Andrew Banks" <andrew at andrewbanks.com> wrote:
>

[%X]

>Compare with civil engineering, where the detailed plans form part 
>of the planning process, and implementation is controlled by strict 
>building regulations, and independently monitored - and all components have 
>to comply with appropriate standards.

Which is a situation that one has to fight hard for when talking about
the development of software for a system. Why should there be a
difference of approach to sound development processes in the different
engineering disciplines.

Regards

Paul E. Bennett IEng MIET
Systems Engineer
Lunar Mission One Ambassador
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