Saturday, 4 Sep 2010

Event Details

>> HF EVENT, joint with IMechE: Avoiding catastrophes – are you competent? Provisional title

Joint event with Institution of Mechanical Engineers,

Sponsored by the Health and Safety Executive

and supported by the Safety and Reliability Society

Background

It is the role of engineering to fulfil the aspirations of investors and the needs of society at large without adverse impacts on safety integrity, environmental impact and sustainability while ensuring the stable predictable delivery of product and services through life.  All these factors are interdependent.
To achieve a safe, predictable business asset that demonstrably supports all aspects of risk and reputation, the infrastructure, systems and equipment within it must be capable of performing within acceptable performance boundaries. This should be demonstrable at the outset and continually kept in view with that position being understood and accepted by the public - and not just by “specialists”.
A structured assessment that demonstrates this with an audit trail to the real engineering and operations options is essential and should consider hazards in exhaustive detail. This not only requires techniques and methods but appropriate competences in applying them.

Repeated catastrophes such as Bhopal, Chernobyl, Hatfield, Space Shuttles, Texas City, Buncefield, Jaipur and the Gulf of Mexico continue to blight mankind’s economic and environmental progress and sadly demonstrate that processes and procedures for effective integrity management have been less than fully effective.

Whilst they may have differing proximate engineering causes they all share a commonality where underlying the engineering failure is, to a greater or lesser extent, questions about the competence of the staff and executives managing those risks. Despite the well intentioned motivations of placing integrity as a core theme, this can all too easily be undermined by an incomplete understanding or application and interpretation of techniques.  In addition many “lessons learned” are held back from the benefits of wider dissemination.

This evening event will consider the issues of competence from a regulator and duty holders perspective together with a process of application derived by a leading Institution.  It is intended to initiate a wider debate about how levels of competence can be driven up in organisations which manage substantial engineering risks.

Please note that attendance is by invitation.  If you are interested, please contact Tim at the Hazards Forum Secretariat.

 
Sponsor: Health and Safety Executive, Institution of Mechanical Engineers, with Safety and Relibility Society supporting
Date:
16/06/2010
Time:
Start: 17:30
End: 20:30
Venue:
Institution of Mechanical Engineers
1 Birdcage Walk
Westminster
London
SW1H 9JJ
Venue Directions
Contact:
Tim at hazards.forum@ice.org.uk