A design-for-safety methodology for large engineering systems

Both the Cullen report of the Piper Alpha disaster and the Carver report on ship safety have proposed that safety should be incorporated into maritime design processes from the initial stages and that more scientific and objective approaches are required in order to help prevent major accidents, to demonstrate safety, and to describe the safe operational requirements of large made-to-order products such as offshore platforms and ships effectively and efficiently. In this paper, the characteristics of large made-to-order products are described and their design process is studied together with a proposed design framework. After investigating the current design-for-safety status of large made-to-order products, a generic design-far-safety methodology is proposed and discussed in the context of the general design process. This proposed design-for-safety methodology may form the basis for the further development of safety assessment procedures and safety-based decision-making modelling techniques. The phases in the proposed design-for-safety methodology are studied together with their objectives and requirements. Finally, concluding remarks are given.