Assessing Risk in the Deign Process

[alex fletcher]

The aim of this post is to encourage discussion of risk Management in the Design process
What Processes or procedures do you employ to Identify hazards arising at the design level and when identified what controls do you put in place to control the risks arising from the hazards etc.
To promote General Discussion.

[jehardiman]

1) All plans, calculations, etc. get peer review.
2) A departmentally seperate "greybeard"/FMEA review is conducted of the design.
3) All single point failures are identified.
4) All critical design points are identified.
5) Risk is assigned.
6) All identified hazards are mitigated or accepted. NOTE: The basic risk all mariners take cannot be mitigated and must be accepted by end product user.
7) A safety notebook with findings and response is maintained through the life of the project.

You need to get a good book on FMEA.

[Robert Gainer]

Forgive my ignorance but what is FMEA.
Thanks,
Robert Gainer

[jehardiman]

Originally Posted by Robert Gainer

Forgive my ignorance but what is FMEA.
Thanks,
Robert Gainer

Failure Modes and Effects Analysis.

[MikeJohns]

A big risk is a Peer acting as an 'Expert' witness in a lawsuit who has the benefit of hindsight and an ego.

[jehardiman]

Originally Posted by MikeJohns

A big risk is a Peer acting as an 'Expert' witness in a lawsuit who has the benefit of hindsight and an ego.

And/or a compeating design...

[Redsky]

if the boat was suspect and said "Expert" worked with or worked on the design with the review group, then said "Expert" should not be allowed as a witness in any capasity due to "professional bias" and in fact should be sitting with the builder as a co defendant depending on circumstances.
if you want real justice in that kind of thing the design and calculations,along with all other known factors at time of accident should be reviewed by somone not connected with it in the first place,,glareing errors tend to show themseves to somone who hasent looked a it for endless hours while designeing and or building the thing....however i tend to think most..above 80%...accidents are caused by mishandeling the boat in the first place.

[alex fletcher]

Hi guys thanks for the input. I think this thread will generate meaningful disscusion for all Desgners and engineers.
As a safety and Engineering proffessional, Iam glad to see that you Asses the risk of design failure, but what I am also concerned with is, the Occupational Health and Safety of those people, that will be manufactureing the Vessel.
Do you assess the risks involved in the production Process, like exposure to chemicals?
Do you look at all the Possible hazards arising from the production, and the Use of the designed Vessel?
Do Have a policy and procedure to Substitute More Hazardous Materials, Chemicals, Manufacturing Methods and Processes, for less hazardous ones during the design stage?

I also use Peer Review during Design Stage Risk Assessment's is True that you must be extremely careful with peer review, due to not only to litigation, but as Trade Secrets and Privacy are very important. The use of Professional Bodies and their follow members helps as They are then legally bound to a Code of Ethics.
I use the Society of Engineers and the Safety Institute of Australia etc.
I mostly select my Peer Reviewers form the other members of the of the professional Bodies that I am a Member of this Gives me, my customer and the law confidence in the review, it also gives a better outcome as quite often the reviewer is an expert in that field.
But I can see the concetration on the leagals so to speak from the last few posts. Lets put that aside an conserntrate on Safety In Design after all if Every thing from the Design up is safe How and anyone take any kind of legal Action against you?

[jehardiman]

Originally Posted by alex fletcher

but what I am also concerned with is, the Occupational Health and Safety of those people, that will be manufactureing the Vessel.
Do you assess the risks involved in the production Process, like exposure to chemicals?

Rule #1: you cannot protect people from thier own stupidity. In the US exposure protection is mandateded by OSHA. You njust comply with the law.

Do you look at all the Possible hazards arising from the production, and the Use of the designed Vessel?

Rule #1: you cannot protect people from thier own stupidity, and stupid people are very creative. You cannot look at "all the Possible hazards arising from the Use of the Vessel" because you cannot even concieve of them all.

Do Have a policy and procedure to Substitute More Hazardous Materials, Chemicals, Manufacturing Methods and Processes, for less hazardous ones during the design stage?

Hazardous materials cost money to use, store, and dispose of the waste; so the problem is self regulating for companies that comply with the laws. However, see Rule #1 and someone may try to circumvent the regulations.

I also use Peer Review during Design Stage ...<snip>...

Often peer review is accomplished in-house for large companies who have thier own independent safety branch which many do.

But I can see the concetration on the leagals so to speak from the last few posts. Lets put that aside an conserntrate on Safety In Design after all if Every thing from the Design up is safe How and anyone take any kind of legal Action against you?

Simple, for a $50 court filling fee....if the "victim's" Lawyer thinks you have deep pockets. I can point you to websites that will have a lawyer evaluate your submitted injury claim for viability and put you in touch with a local lawyer. To see how complicated this can get, here is a simple court brief about a ladder, a claimed defect, and an expert witness: http://www.mied.uscourts.gov/_opinio...ML00-10117.PDF

There are only two things that drive design development, increased profit (+ for corporation, - for engineering) and decreased liability (- for corporation,+for engineering). These two interlocked concepts, profit and risk, drive most engineering decisions.

Do you have enough for you paper yet?

[alex fletcher]

Iam in Australia Things are a little different that's why I suggested to put the law stuff aside. Its a world wide forum after all and there's lot of different laws out there.
A Hypothetical Question for every one and food for thought
You are a designer of Ships in the Early 1960s your design is leading towards Supa heated Steam. Currently the Jury is still out as to whether Asbestos is Harmful or not there are other insulations on the market but thay quite a bit more expensive than blue asbestos the most common pipe insulation in industry at that time.
you have seen what you think may have been related, a number of acquaintances of yours, who you, have known to work with Asbestos have contracted caner after a number of years
What would you do?

[Redsky]

quietly gather information.
no info no case....or whatever...course back then industrial complacency about sutch things seems to have been commenplace. and most working people of the time were often delibritly left uninformed/underinformed about what corporations really knew about the materials...watch erin brocovitch...a movie about sutch a thing....still happens sometimes today. even accidently with new industrial processess.. case in point research biodesil and read the msds sheets for in paticular methanol. i almost have to consider it darwinizum in action...but it still hurts to see people doing themselves in by accident

[MikeJohns]

Originally Posted by alex fletcher

after all if Every thing from the Design up is safe How and anyone take any kind of legal Action against you?

Having acted as expert witness myself, I can say that the courts are best avoided at all cost. The adverserial system is flawed and Lawyers use any avenue available without any morality whatsoever.

What tends to occur is that insurance companies take control and will often simply pay out on a no-fault basis just to get the case off their backs. This can leave the defendant very frustrated if he/she was hoping for a vindication.

[alex fletcher]

redsky glad you mentioned Borcovitdh a classic case of complaceny from the design stage a fail to recognize chromium as a hazard

[alex fletcher]

I also suggest we may look at the MSDS Unleaded Petrol and compare it to Methanol I know what I'd rather use

[jehardiman]

Originally Posted by alex fletcher

You are a designer of Ships in the Early 1960s your design is leading towards Supa heated Steam. Currently the Jury is still out as to whether Asbestos is Harmful or not there are other insulations on the market but thay quite a bit more expensive than blue asbestos the most common pipe insulation in industry at that time.
you have seen what you think may have been related, a number of acquaintances of yours, who you, have known to work with Asbestos have contracted caner after a number of years
What would you do?

1) Just to set the stage. I was involved in removing Asbestos shipboard/piping lagging in the late 70's in the days before they got high handed about PPE. It was the old troweled on stuff, and you had to use an angle grinder with a fiber wheel to cut if off in chunks then vacumm and bag it. You would come out of the machinery spaces covered in dust and when you showered, the water ran white. Here it is 30 years later and I'm still in a monitoring program (in fact my bi-annual check-up is next week).

2) That said, did I, in my PPE (coveralls and a mask) recieve more or less exposure at work than I did at home working on my own car replacing brake pads and clutches without any PPE? What about driving too work? Or the classroom I sat in during my education (40's-50's era schools where everything was asbestos to prevent fire). What about chemistry class in college? What was my exposure then in the days before "virtual experiments" when we actually got to touch, and spill, asbestos, mercury, chrome, etc...?

3) EVERYONE in the early '60's smoked, themselves or 2nd hand, and that is going to so overshadow any real data for years to come. The US ARMY/AEC/DOE/NIH together did a survey of troops exposed to 50's desert above ground testing (where inhaled exposure was known) to those not exposed and the population in general for incidence of lung cancer. The findings show NO statistical linking....except to smoking. Almost all of the troops identified themselves as smokers, as is to be expected of the young male US population of the time. While the rate of lung cancer in the exposed troops was higher than the TOTAL general population, it was the same as the unexposed troops AND the portion of the general population that identified themselves as smokers. So, was inhaled exposure the cause of increased lung cancer?

Causality is something that is very difficult to prove. Like the flawed saccharin tests in the late 60's, this is very difficult ground to tread.