[SystemSafety] Functional hazard analysis, does it work?

[SPRIGGS, John J]

Matthew,
In my opinion, if you have one of those FHA procedures that start with, “What can go wrong in my system and what is the effect if it does?” then you need to augment it with something else.
I think it would be better to start with, “What do we not want to happen?” and then explore whether those things can arise from your system (considering people, procedures, not just ‘platforms’ and the environment).

John
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/accidents-twenty-five-year-old-cheese-john-spriggs

From: systemsafety-bounces at lists.techfak.uni-bielefeld.de [mailto:systemsafety-bounces at lists.techfak.uni-bielefeld.de] On Behalf Of Matthew Squair
Sent: 19 January 2016 00:43
To: systemsafety at lists.techfak.uni-bielefeld.de
Subject: [SystemSafety] Functional hazard analysis, does it work?

A question to the list.

Does the process of functional hazard analysis 'work' in terms of identifying all functional hazards that we are, or should be, interested in?

The way the FHA process is defined in the various standards seems IMO to be very reductionist in nature, fine for identifying the specific consequences of a single functional failure mode, but what about functional interactions, multiple functional failures, the interaction of modes with functions and so on.

The background to this is that the project I'm working with is about to commit to a significant campaign of 'FHA'-ing. So we're engaged in a little bit of professional navel gazing about the efficacy of the technique before we commit to the campaign.

--
Matthew Squair


BEng (Mech) MSysEng
MIEAust CPEng

Mob: +61 488770655<tel:%2B61%20488770655>
Email: MattSquair at gmail.com<mailto:MattSquair at gmail.com>
Website: www.criticaluncertainties.com<http://criticaluncertainties.com/>

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