Last Friday, Acmena Principal Systems Assurance Consultant, Andrew Gabler, has the pleasure of presenting to over 80 members of the Queensland Rail Major Projects Integration Team.

Highlighting a concerning trend in the rail industry that a system is often deemed to be ‘safe’ if it is accompanied by swathes of paperwork, Andrew’s paper, ‘Is Too Much Safety Safe? The Danger of Large Safety Arguments’, examined how the practice can actually undermine safety and why quality is always more important than quantity when it comes to creating a successful safety argument.

“I was delighted to have the opportunity to share the presentation with QR’s Major Projects Integration team, as the insights that formed the basis of the paper were largely derived from my experience on major projects, which is very much in the team’s domain,” said Andrew.

“I think it is a worthwhile exercise to share some of the concerns I have with people who are heavily involved in this aspect of the industry as to how we prepare safety arguments and provide some recommendations on how we can improve the arguments we put forward.

“It is so important that we as system safety professionals ensure we provide the best support to projects and enable them to deliver readable, understandable, and convincing safety arguments for why the delivered system is safe.”

“Andy’s presentation was valuable to the team as it went a long way to enabling comprehension of the theory and achieving the goal of making irreducible aspects of system safety as simple as possible without having to compromise the overall message,” said Queensland Rail MPI Asset Assurance and Acceptance Manager, Shami Dissanayake.

“It did a great job of highlighting the significance of structured and progressively developed safety cases as being enormously beneficial to the Rail Transport Operator.”

 

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