Annual Report of the Society 2010

INTRODUCTION

SAFETY AND RELIABILITY SOCIETY

The broad aim of the Society is to stimulate the development and the use of safety and reliability engineering techniques for the benefit of society at large. It acts as a focus for corporate activities in the safety and reliability fields and provides an environment for the exchange of experience between members.

Executive Officers for 2010/11

Chairman: Steve Clark

Chairman Elect: John Pearce

Past Chairman: Trevor Cockram

President: David Holland

Financial Director: Peter Stanton

Development Director: Allan Bain

Chief Executive: Jacqueline Christodoulou

Safety and Reliability Society

One Central Park

Northampton Road

Manchester

M40 5BP

Telephone: 0161 918 6663

E-mail: info@sars.org.uk

Web: www.sars.org.uk

Report of the Chief Executive

2010 brought changes for the Safety and Reliability Society and SaRS Ltd as the process of finding new premises and moving the office began. Until recently, the Society had used the premises of other organisations and external venues for events. However, an ideal premises was identified in which integral conferencing facilities could be used; a contract for these premises was negotiated during the year. The office was moved in late 2011 and the Society is now based at One Central Park, Manchester.

The second phase of the change was to develop a new logo for the Society. The old logo has served the Society for the whole of its 30 year history and was designed by Tony Venton, Chairman of the Society in 1982. The old logo represented a stylised version of the bowline knot. This non-slip reliable knot was highly appropriate for a Society dedicated to Safety and Reliability.

However, as time moved on, the knot began to appear dated, as other organisations moved on to more modern logos. The concern of the Council of the Society, and certainly my own concern, was that we chose a new logo that retained the ethos of the Society; although the appearance would be streamlined, the corporate colours would be retained and the title would appear in the logo to anchor it into the ethical values of the Society’s 30 year grounding.

2010 was also a year of reflection as we lost several founding members of the Society. Eric Green and John Bourne, authors of the seminal text ‘Reliability Technology’, Fred Williams, Ian Gilroy and Bob Moss, will all be missed. We send condolences to their families and are grateful for their contributions over many years.

Strategy and Policy has moved on in 2010 and the Society has worked towards a register for Safety and Reliability Engineers. Allan Bain, Development Director, presented a paper on this at a well attended Hazards Forum Event in September 2010 to a warm reception by sister organisations. The work on this initiative continues, alongside developing marketing and organic growth strategic aims.

Membership

The recruitment target for 2010 was met through a new initiative of recruiting at events. In pursuit of our charitable aims, we offered our delegates a chance to experience the Society for one year as part of the attendance fee for conferences. This was a popular choice and raised the profile of the Society to stakeholders as well as boosting membership applications.

Advertising

Despite the economic downturn the advertising revenue has remained fairly steady. Academic affiliates have taken up our offer to advertise for 50% discount when they obtain affiliate status, and this has been the main source of our advertising revenue in 2010.

Events

2010 was an incredible year for SaRS events. At the beginning of the year national trends were showing that delegate attendance was down on 2009 due to cutbacks, and this situation would worsen through the year. These did not materialise in our event attendance. The North of Scotland Dinner in Aberdeen ran well and was a credit to the hard working North of Scotland Branch. A reliability event held in Manchester was popular with many interesting papers and will run again in 2011, and our 30^th Anniversary event was well attended in London. In particular, this event captured the value of the work of those who have, and continue to contribute to the Society as Founding Fellows sat beside new members to hear about the history and development of safety and reliability. I attended all these events and the office team were assisted by members of Council and branch members who all work hard to make the events a successful learning opportunity for delegates.

Publications

Although publications do not have a specific income performance indicator, they are an important membership benefit and cost and quality control is important. This year saw four Journals and ten newsletters in addition to the development of a new ‘Body of Knowledge’ area on the SaRS website. The website continues to grow as a communication tool and 2011 will see further development, both aesthetic and technical.

The office was working at capacity in 2010. Due to relocation Dominique Lalaye left the Society in 2010. Kathie Calderwood continued to do an excellent job working on administration and events. Members of Council and committees have provided a wealth of support particularly in organising and supporting events. This has led to each event having a technical lead to formulate the content and approve the programme. This strategy continues to work well.

As we move into 2011 and towards closer links with sister organisations and external stakeholders, it is timely to remember why the Safety and Reliability Society was formed:

‘To advance education and promote the scientific study of safety and reliability and associated disciplines, maintainability, availability, risk assessment and life cycle costing, in relation to the design of plant, systems and equipment for the benefit of the public and thereby to promote industry and commerce, and to publish the results of such studies worldwide.’ (Charitable Aims)

and in an excerpt from the Society bylaws:

‘to establish professional and educational standards for safety and reliability engineers
to provide a central organisation dedicated to the stimulation and advancement of safety and reliability technology for the benefit of industry and the public
to provide an international forum for the exchange of information on safety and reliability engineering
to establish standard techniques and encourage consistency in their application
to encourage organisations and government departments to apply safety and reliability engineering techniques
to enhance the status of Society members’ (Society Bylaws)

I believe that the work done in raising the profile of the Society in 2010 and the positive predictions for 2011 are wholly in keeping with the above aims and that the Society will continue to flourish

Jacqueline A Christodoulou

Chief Executive 2010

Reports of Executive Officers of Council

President’s Report

David Holland

In my report last year, I proposed a very simple model for managing safety and ensuring an appropriate level of reliability is:

get competent people to identify hazards (to Safety) and the measures (with adequate Reliability) needed to manage them
have a corporate governance process that proactively seeks assurance that these measures are in place and working
a senior management that “walks the talk” and creates a positive safety culture by systematically paying attention to the right things

The SaRS Purpose, Objective and Aims are strongly aligned with furthering the robustness of Point No 1.

Our purpose is to represent engineers and scientists working in safety and reliability.
Our objective is to enhance the professionalism and reputation of engineers and scientists working in safety and reliability.
Our aims include to produce professional and educational standards and to provide an international cross-industry forum for exchange of knowledge.

Through our achievements so far in pursuing our Purpose, Objectives and aims I firmly believe that SaRS has had a positive impact and provided a net benefit to society as a whole. We are a relatively small and select group of Safety and Reliability Professionals and to have made the impact we have, makes me proud to be the President of this Society. However I know that we can do more. By increasing our size it follows that we can increase our level of impact and there is a clear desire amongst the SaRS Council to move this forward.

For me the key milestones over the past year have been:

Head office relocation to a more dynamic and vibrant location, with conference facilities and a more pleasant working environment. This sends the message that we are going places! Just visiting the new location made me feel very confident and enthused about the future of our Society. I know this has taken up a lot of effort by our Chief Executive and her team but It was clearly well worth it!
Taking the initiative on competency following recommendation 28.4 of the Haddon-Cave report, including the appointment of a development director Allan Bain and his high profile paper on the subject which received strong interest from key stakeholders.
The continuation of our drive to become the rightful home of the Chartered Safety Engineer through Harry Hopkins’ continuing and tireless efforts to drive forward the Chartered Engineer process.

This May will mark the 10^th Annual Dinner of the North of Scotland Branch. The 1^st event was meant to be a “one-off” but demand has continued and we have been fortunate to have Ian Stanley driving the rest of the Branch to keep the event going for all 10 dinners. There are 2 other NoS committee members who have been around for all 10: Paul Davidson and one other who can’t be named because he is too modest (ok it’s me!). Thanks also to the other NoS committee members past and present – we could not have done it without you!.

We have many other strong and vibrant branches across the country. The Branches are where our existing and future members really see SaRS in action and in my view, an active network of branches is truly where SaRS adds value in providing a positive impact on Society.

Outgoing Chairman’s Report

Trevor Cockram

SARS Chairman 2009/10

Our 30^th Anniversary year has been an eventful one. I must start on a sad note that the Society records the death of five of our founding members over the year, and it is appropriate to think of the legacy that they have left us.

Following the AGM we held our SaRS 2009 conference which was very well attended with the SaRS stream being supported even when drinks and food were being offered at the end of the day to those who were at the IET stream. The food and drink did hold out for SaRS members to participate. During the last day of the conference the report of the inquiry by Mr Charles Haddon-Cave into the loss of Nimrod XV230 was published. This is one of those occasions like the publications of the Piper-Alpha inquiry that will have a significant impact on the way we work as safety and reliability engineers.

The society council held a special meeting which resulted in the society’s response to the inquiry report which appeared in the journal and downloadable from our website. The impact of the Haddon-Cave review still consumes individual and council time. In some ways the report raised questions which we are already answering as part of our growth strategy implemented by Allan Bain and the new education committee.

On 20 April 2010 the well under the Deepwater Horizon failed and the rig exploded killing 11 workers; the resulting oil spill led to a major environmental incident, and although final reports have yet to be published there appears to have been a failure of the defence in depth approach applied in this case. The off-shore and certainly deepwater drilling companies will need to learn the lessons from this incident.

During the year we have held a number of successful events and conferences; the reliability day in Manchester was popular and looks like becoming a regular fixture in the calendar. Yet again the North of Scotland branch excelled with their annual dinner, Mr Steve Walker from the HSE off-shore division gave a very interesting presentation on the “Challenges for the offshore industry arising from the Nimrod Review. A report on this was published in our Summer Journal. We also held a successful Language of Safety event in June.

We have some significant events to look forward to in the next month, with the SaRS 2010 conference being a celebration of 30 years of risk assessment and of the Safety and Reliability Society. We have secured a number of high quality speakers and should be an interesting day. Although not in the events calendar another significant event is the move away from Clayton House in Piccadilly Manchester to a new office in the Manchester. This will result in a much better and safer working environment for the office staff and the ability for members to visit the library and attending meetings. May I take the opportunity to thank the full time staff in Manchester who are doing a great job.

May I also take this opportunity to thank everyone in the society who has contributed to this our 30^th anniversary year and to the many people who have helped or contacted me over the past year.

Looking back at my report from last year shows how well we have done:

SaRS is currently a very small player – We led the response to Haddon-Cave which has been recognised by government and industry. We have an invigorated council and a positive outlook so I consider we have raised our profile.
SaRS has done well for its size but it is still around 600 members – This is true but we are growing at a time when most organisations are losing members due to the recession.
SaRS has tried stepping up a gear before but has not succeeded in becoming a major institution. – Again true, but we have grown significantly in influence and support.
Despite SaRS saying the right things there has been little external activity – This is an area where we can claim some success.

Thank you all for your support and courage in having a physically disabled chairman, there have been occasions where a more physically active chairman may have done a better job, but I have tried to do my best for you. As I pass the chairmanship of SaRS to Stephen Clark, I wish him a successful year.

Incoming Chairman’s Report

Steve Clark

SARS Chairman 2010/11

I would firstly like to thank our outgoing Chairman, Trevor Cockram, for his dedicated leadership during what has been a landmark year for the Society. I feel privileged to be the incoming Chairman at what I hope will be a time of change and development for the Society.

I have worked in Safety and Reliability for over 20 years and have experience in a number of industry sectors. Most recently I have been working in aviation with a particular focus on Air Traffic Management. I joined SaRS in 1999 and have served on Council since 2005.

2010 was a landmark year for the Society in many respects. As well as marking the 30^th anniversary of our foundation, it was also noteworthy for what I believe to be two significant milestones in our development.

During the year, we put in place agreements that now enable professional safety engineers to gain Incorporated and Chartered status with the Engineering Council through SaRS membership alone. This is a significant step for the Society and I hope will act as a springboard for many individuals to gain professional status through their specialism in safety and reliability engineering.
For the past 30 years our headquarters have been at Clayton House in Manchester’s City Centre. These premises served us well but, looking to the future, it was time to change. One Central Park provides us with modern office accommodation on an innovation park with strong links to academia and incorporating conferencing facilities. This will provide us with the ability to host conferences and events internally and will also hopefully open up our offices and the resources they offer more widely to the membership.

Looking to the future, and aligned to the core objectives of the Society, there will be three main areas of focus during the forthcoming year: Value, Engagement and Growth

Value

Building on the core value provided by our charitable aims and annual programme of events (national and local), we need to work more closely with other professional institutions and academia to develop and promote competence frameworks and provide formal accreditation of appropriate training courses. We also need to work towards reinforcing ourselves as the professional body for safety and reliability practitioners across all industry sectors – ultimately working towards becoming a Licensed Body with the Engineering Council. By providing enhanced professional status for our members we will further improve the existing values of membership, which in itself should help drive engagement and growth.

Engagement

The strength of our Society comes from our membership. We need to encourage and develop the Society through active engagement of the membership at all levels, from Council to the Branches. We also need to actively engage with our affiliate organisations, both industrial and academic, to help pursue the aims of the Society.

Growth

We have a relatively small membership given the overall size of our profession. We need to increase the membership of the Society through the enhancement of membership value and the promotion of that value. We need to ensure that more practising safety and reliability professionals want to join as Members.

I look forward to working with you over the coming year.

Report of the Financial Director

Pete Stanton

SaRS Finance Director

Summary

In the current economic situation, 2009/10 was a disappointing but not unreasonable year from a purely financial perspective. The combined organisation had a total turnover of more than £105,000, the third year in a row in which the turnover has been in six figures.

However costs have risen this year; the result of this is that we made a total loss of £6,800, compared to last year’s loss of £3,200 and a profit of over £14,000 two years ago. So, not a great result, but we have the reserves from previous successful years to cope with this.

‘Society’ and ‘Limited’

SaRS is actually made up of two organisations: The Society itself is a charity which owns a limited company called SaRS Limited.

‘Society’ is allowed to receive charitable donations and hence recover the tax on them through ‘Gift Aid’. ‘Limited’ runs our events such as conferences on behalf of ‘Society’; it can reclaim VAT on its activities and donates any residual income beyond the reserves it needs to operate to ‘Society’.

The main income-generating events of the year were the North of Scotland dinner, along with the various seminars and workshops we held throughout the year. All of these covered their costs. The income for ‘Limited’ includes money from mailshots and advertising in the Journal. Total turnover for Limited was £34,900, down from last year’s record £39,300.

The main income for the charitable part of SaRS – ‘Society’ – is in membership and affiliate subscriptions, along with the allied Gift Aid money related to our charitable status and the income that is classified as donations. Total income to Society was £72,300, well up on last year’s £65,800, but costs rose as well, notably in taking on an extra part-time member of staff to help develop the Society in the long term.

2010/11 Budget

The coming year’s budget is once again based around breaking even over the year. Early indications are that whilst personal and corporate membership is holding up well, advertising income has dropped off probably reflecting the economy as a whole. However our reserves from previous years are such that we can sustain ourselves for the foreseeable future.

Between the two parts of the organisation we keep our money in two banks (with savings as well as current accounts) and a building society. Having money spread across three independent financial institutions provides some cover against cashflow problems in the event of a bank suffering problems and our money becoming temporarily ‘locked’.

We are planning to run several events this year using our new venue at One Central Park in Manchester as well as at other locations throughout the country. In addition, we are co-sponsoring many more events with other organisations such as IMechE, IET and IOSH.

As all of these events have discounted rates for Society members (regardless of membership grade), your membership fees have the potential to save you hundreds of pounds.

Report of the Development Director

Allan Bain

SaRS Development Director

In addition to his duties as ES&CPD chairman the Development Director has assisted council in developing its new board member’s briefing pack and a new set of performance indicators to measure the success of our transformation throughout coming years. Additionally the Development Director hopes to set up:

a series of 1 day workshops to help make duty holders and senior managers aware of their safety roles
a seminar to help explain our new educational accreditation scheme this autumn.

Committee Reports to the Annual General meeting 2010

EXTERNAL AFFAIRS COMMITTEE REPORT

Harry Hopkins – Chairman

ORGANISATIONS

Engineering Council (EC)

Professional Affiliate (PA) membership continues. The annual Professional Affiliates Meeting was attended by Harry Hopkins. The main topic continues to be the experience with joint membership schemes and the discussion of possible models for smaller institutions to become licensed possibly via a jointly set up licensed body. A survey of potential registrants has shown that a joint PA body is still not viable. At the moment the way ahead appears to be to give increased support to joint schemes while increasing the number of Professional Affiliates and their scope.

EC have taken over from the former ETB the joint institution developed on-line Professional Development scheme. This has been restructured and relaunched. The Society of Environmental Engineers (SEE) is one of the sponsors and the scheme is available to registrants through the SaRS/SEE agreement and is expected to be available to members who are progressing towards registration with EC. Direct access to this scheme is also being looked at.

EC are in the process of updating the guidance, first issued in 1993, on risk issues. SaRS is a corresponding member of the working group (which is restricted to EC Licensed Institutions), working drafts have been reviewed and comments submitted.

ECUK newsletters are on the ECUK website.

Hazards Forum

Membership continues. Lecture meetings have been held which this year have included competence as a theme and Allan Bain has given a presentation on SaRS plans to provide a more central co-operative role in this field. Newsletters and details of meetings are available on the Hazards Forum website and attendance at meetings is by applying for an invitation. Membership allows attendance at the Inter Institutional Group on Health and Safety (IIGHS) – see below.

European Safety and Reliability Association (ESRA)

Membership continues, UK Chapter still inactive. ESREL conferences continue, newsletters are available on the esrahomepage website. The General Assembly Meeting was attended by Richard Denning. The option remains of co-hosting a future ESREL conference.

Committee on Defence Equipment Reliability and Maintainability (CODERM) Industry Forum

Meetings and workshops have been attended. Updates of defence standards, significant items and minutes, where relevant, are posted on SaRS website. Drafts of DEFSTAN 00-42 parts 5&6 have been issued. SaRS representative- Chris Harding, QinetiQ, deputy Ashley Fookes, BMTRCL.

Professional Organisations on Occupational Safety and Health (POOSH)

The Secretariat has transferred from the Society of Medicine and Faculty of Medicine (SOM/FOM) to the IIRSM. Recent initiatives remain mainly health related; however two member organisations have been involved with an HSE feasibility study for a register of safety consultants. The outcome of this is still awaited. Harry Hopkins attends.

Inter Institution Group on Health and Safety (IIGHS)

Members represent the specialist safety groups of engineering institutions plus others attending via Hazards Forum membership. Topics covered are health, safety culture, and undergraduate risk education. Main item continues to be risk teaching material which had initial HSE funding but now needs further support to become suitable for Universities to adopt. Harry Hopkins attends.

Other Institutions

Relevant activities and meetings from Safety and/or Reliability sections of Engineering Institutions are monitored.

SOCIETY PROCEDURES

The draft Procedures Manual for SaRS has been circulated for comment prior to adoption; the Manual for SaRS Ltd has been further developed

REGISTRATION

In 2009 EC reviewed the working arrangements of joint membership agreements to allow the registration of members of professional Affiliate organisations and noted the apparent confusion these arrangements were generating. As a result EC agreed that joint agreements for registration did not have to include an annual joint membership. SEE have therefore introduced an alternative agreement where an annual fee, less than the joint membership subscription, is charged for administering the registration. SaRS has entered into such an agreement which runs in parallel with the existing joint membership agreement, giving successful registrants a choice in their relationship with SEE.

Activity since 2009 AGM through the SaRS/SEE Joint Agreements:

Registration Process: To date Past year

Enquiries: 81 16

Application Forms reviewed: 47 11

Forms Forwarded to SEE: 29 8

Technical Reports (TR) received 1 0

TR interviews 0 0

TR interviews outstanding 1

PR interviews: 19 9

PR interviews outstanding 6

Total registrants to date: C.Eng. 17

I.Eng. 1

AFFILIATES

Two new Affiliates have joined: Phaedrus Systems and Centrica Energy.

TECHNICAL

Representation on BSI Committees

HS/1 Martin Cottam

DS/1 Richard Denning

Comments were collated on the HSE Consultation Document on proposed changes to the Pipeline Safety Regulations.

PUBLICATIONS REPORT

Richard Denning – Chairman

This year has been another successful year for all of our publications. Along with the proceedings of various events the Society publishes:

Safety and Reliability – the quarterly journal of the Society
Society – the monthly newsletter
www.sars.org.uk – the website of the Society

Safety and Reliability

This year the Journal has been published to schedule and has contained an average of 5 papers on practical developments on Safety and Reliability Society related issues. We produced an extra edition of the Journal covering the AGM and the working of the society. Safety and reliability is popular with advertisers and authors alike – with requests to advertise and paper submissions increasing. The papers published are a mixture of solicited and unsolicited papers, all of which are peer reviewed to ensure the content is accurate and relevant to Society members.

You can help the journal grow by:

Offering papers
Encouraging others to offer papers
Suggesting to the editor subjects for future papers/special issues
By offering to edit a special edition

If you read anything in the Journal which you disagree with or have a different view on then write to the Editor editor@sars.org.uk so that we can discuss these differences; one thing all safety and reliability engineers should know is that there is very rarely one correct answer.

Society

The newsletter is published monthly and includes news items about the society and related technical subjects. It is the primary method for the council to keep the membership informed of happenings.

Website

The website is a growing method of communication, as we move from relatively static information on the society to a more dynamic and informative medium. Our jobs page remains popular with advertisers, many of whom are affiliates of the Society. We retain a presence on Facebook, LinkedIn and Wikipedia although for all of these traffic tends to come from non-members. We have continued to expand our body of knowledge area; if you have suggestions for links we should add or articles you feel would be of value to the wider profession, please contact the office.

The future

It is intended to continue publishing Society and safety and Reliability in the current format. It is intended to overhaul the website over the next year mainly to make it easier to maintain and expand, but also to improve access ability.

Summary

The society publications are in a good position. With plans to maintain and develop these to deliver useful information to society members. Most of our publication effort is voluntary, from the authors offering papers to the reviewers to the proof-readers – to all of those who have contributed this year, the Society owes you its thanks.

MEMBERSHIP AND GRADING COMMITTEE

Richard Denning – Chairman

Committee

Richard Denning – Chairman

David Smith

Nigel Lock

Stephen Clark

David Holland;

Simon Rutherford;

Trevor Cockram

During the year the committee has reviewed and up-dated the manual which identifies how membership applications are processed, this has resulted in a streamlined web based process, which typically processes applications in just under 3 weeks.

The updates to the manual have been reflected in the guidance material available on the web for applicants. We have also taken the opportunity to simplify our application procedures especially for students and associate members. While for Fellow the sponsor criteria has been changed to only one Fellow sponsor rather than two; this is as a result of feedback from potential Fellows about the difficulty of identifying two Fellows who could vouch for their work.

During the year we assessed and agreed the following membership applications:

Fellow	Member	Associate Member
5	22	3

Members of Safety and Reliability Society Council

Allan Bain

Mr Allan Bain, CEng, MRINA, MIMarEST, MSaRS, RCNC, was elected 2007-8 chairman of the Safety & Reliability Society, UK. He has worked systems safety in the military and maritime sectors having worked with in-service military and merchant marine safety as well as concept design work in the offshore sector. He has served in two of MOD’s in-house regulatory divisions, authored MOD’s JSP430-Issue.2 (Ship Safety Policy), when in the Ship Safety Board and JSP520-Issue.2 (UK Ordnance, Munitions & Explosives Safety Policy), when Secretary to the Defence Ordnance Safety Board. He has contributed to over 20 papers, several UK Defence safety standards, MOD web-based guidance and lectures on several MOD safety courses. He currently works as the Head in-service Naval Architect of Capital Ships Directorate (Carriers, amphibious ships & T42 destroyers), at MOD Abbey Wood, Bristol.

Andy Buchan

After studying Physical sciences at RGIT in Aberdeen, Andy started his career in the nuclear industry carrying out research into radioactive waste disposal, moving on to work in the field of safety and radioactive waste technical assessments. Throughout the 1990s, he was involved in a number of decommissioning projects varying from redundant pile reactors to highly contaminated chemical process plant within the Windscale and Sellafield complexes. Andy has been involved in liaison with nuclear regulators over a number of years, and is familiar with the constraints of operating within a strict regulatory framework. One of his main areas of work has been developing and co-ordinating a new type of safety case for our facilities, which introduced much more emphasis upon the underpinning of engineering capability, this involved close liaison with many engineering specialists and regulators. Following this Andy was appointed as the head of a small team, which carried out Independent Nuclear Safety Assessment of all safety cases which were to be submitted to the regulator. In doing this he recognised the need for a cross nuclear industry forum for peer review, which now has representatives from all UK nuclear licensees. Recently his role has involved meeting internationally with other licensees and regulators under the OECD/Nuclear Energy Agency.

Andy’s current role is head of nuclear safety case processes for Sellafield Ltd; this requires him to take an overview of safety processes for one of the largest nuclear complexes in the world. This role requires a detailed technical understanding of a large range of nuclear facilities and the safety technology and safety management arrangements which underpin them.

Andy’s career has involved working for small, medium size and large organisations and this has allowed him to work closely with colleagues, communicate with customers and stakeholders, and develop team leadership and management skills.

Andy became a member of the Safety and Reliability Society in 1993 and became a member of the council in 2004, and was chairman from October 2008 to 2009.

Andy is also Member of the Royal Society of Chemistry, a Chartered Chemist and a Member of the Institute of Fire Engineers

Stephen O. Clark, BSc(Hons)Eng, CEng, MIMechE.

Stephen gained an Engineering degree from Brunel University under an undergraduate apprenticeship with Rolls-Royce Limited.

He started working in safety and reliability engineering when he joined Electrowatt engineering consultancy. Initially working in the nuclear industry on hazards identification, risk assessment and safety case development, he subsequently became a founder member of the Electrowatt Oil & Gas Division.

Whilst at Electrowatt, Stephen was made Senior Safety Engineer and worked as project manager or lead safety engineer on the safety support to major oil and gas projects in the UK, Australia, Malaysia and Brunei, involving quantitative risk assessments, development of safety cases and reliability & availability assessments. Stephen also gained experience in the railway industry through the application of these techniques on railway projects in Europe and Hong Kong.

After nine years with Electrowatt, Stephen joined Atkins engineering consultancy. He was promoted to Principal Safety Engineer and continued working in both the oil & gas and railway sectors on major projects in the UK, Hong Kong, Singapore and Taiwan.

Whilst with Atkins, Stephen was seconded to National Air Traffic Services (NATS) providing safety assurance for the new Air Traffic Control Centre at Swanwick. He later worked on safety assurance for advanced controller tools being developed by NATS.

After seven years with Atkins, Stephen joined NATS as Safety Management Specialist. His responsibilities include ensuring that the NATS safety management system reflects recognised best practice and he has recently overseen the integration of human factors assessment techniques into the formal safety management system.

In his current role, Stephen works with external aviation stakeholders on safety support activities including the delivery of the Single European Sky, and with national and international safety regulators to help shape the regulatory framework for the industry to meet the safety challenges of future aviation concepts.

Trevor Cockram

Dr Trevor Cockram is a principal consultant with Praxis High Integrity Systems where he is the Nuclear Safety Authority. His role also includes other high-risk safety assessments in the defence and air traffic management sectors. He is an experienced Independent Safety Auditor and Advisor, with particular emphasis on the safety of programmable electronic systems and software.

He has been the Project Safety Manager for several major international projects and developed many safety cases, developing new methods to improve the visibility and understanding of the safety case contents,

He has been working as part of a joint industry and academic team to develop a standard for the use of Goal Structuring Notation in safety cases.

He is a Fellow of the Safety and Reliability Society and is also treasurer of the SaRS Western Branch. He is also member of the Institute of Engineering and Technology Function Safety Professional Network Executive.

Prior to his current appointment at Praxis in 2000, he worked for 26 years at Rolls-Royce and Rolls-Royce and Associates as a controls safety engineer. During this time he worked on the safety of the control systems for many of the power plants developed by Rolls-Royce.

His research interests are in the application of Bayesian Belief Networks particularly in predicting the effectiveness of systems and software design reviews and inspections, for which he received his PhD in 2001. He has published over 50 research papers.

In his spare time he restores vintage Bristol buses.
Richard Denning MSC, BEng, CEng, FSaRS, FIMechE

He is currently the Principal Reliability Engineer in the UK MOD, responsible for all Reliability policy and manages a team of 30 internal consultants who advise all projects (both new procurement and in-service) on all aspects of Reliability. He is also a Defence Equipment and Support – Fellow recognising his contribution to the wider Reliability field. This role is the culmination of over 18 years working on the reliability of defence equipment and systems. He is also immediate past President of the Safety and Reliability Society – which is the UK professional body for Reliability.
After Graduating from Southampton University, Richard worked for the Ministry of Defence as a project manager for new Royal Navy fire fighting and damage control training systems. It was during this period that he became interested in Reliability, as he was given the additional duties of ensuring that a number of new systems met the reliability requirements.
Building on this work in 1993 he was given a sabbatical to gain an MSc in Quality Improvement and System Reliability at City University. This was followed by a number of years advising Naval projects from Torpedoes and Sonars, through Missiles and radars to Frigates and aircraft carriers on what Reliability is required to be successful and how to achieve it. This role culminated with him leading the team of internal consultants supporting all new and in-service projects associated with the Royal Navy.

In 2004 he took on responsibility for developing a group of 170 to be the single source of expertise in the MOD on Reliability and Reliability Centred Maintenance. In 2005 he became the deputy leader of this new group and head of the policy group which develops policy, advice and training on Reliability and Reliability Centred Maintenance for the MoD.

In 2009 he was made a Defence Equipment & Support specialist fellow recognising his contribution to Reliability

He has been a member of the SaRS Western Branch committee since 1998, was chairman 2002/3 and 2003/4. He has been a member of SaRS council since 2000, Chairman 2003/4, Treasurer 2004/5, President 2006/9 and currently is editor of the SaRS journal.

David Holland

David Holland began his career in Civil Engineering research before becoming a safety engineering consultant to the offshore oil and gas industry. In Dave’s current role he is responsible for ensuring that safety and reliability issues are incorporated into Centrica Energy’s offshore field development projects. He has been a member of the SaRS Council and North of Scotland branch committee for many years and is a former Chairman of the Society.

Harry Hopkins

On leaving school Harry Hopkins joined the Midlands Research Station of the Gas Council (later British Gas) in Solihull. He undertook a sponsored sandwich course leading to an honours degree in Applied Physics from Aston University. His early work was concerned with the industrial uses of gas, including the application of safety control systems to industrial plant and boilers.

The rapid expansion of the natural gas market in the late 1960s led to a number of safety issues which led to him becoming involved in failure and incident (explosion and fire) investigations on industrial and commercial plant, which later led to incident investigations in domestic and commercial property.

The safety issues in the industry led, in the mid 1970s, to the study and introduction of risk assessment to measure the safety record of the industry and to support operations, a particular application being on high pressure gas transmission pipelines. Harry was heavily involved with the application of risk assessment, the development of assessment methodology, the response to new health and safety legislation and participation in Inquiries and other investigations into safety aspects of the supply and use of gas.

In the late 1980s and early 1990s he was responsible for developing packaged risk assessment methodologies incorporating British Gas data and consequence models into a knowledge base and developing procedures to calculate individual and societal risks for a more realistic representation of the events being assessed e.g. taking account of transient releases, interaction distances, escape, shelter, etc. One package, for gas transmission pipelines, became the basis for an international collaboration on pipeline risk assessment, and was used to develop acceptable risk criteria for pipelines.

He moved with British Gas to Loughborough in 1993; however with the contraction of numbers in the industry left in 1996 and has worked since as an independent consultant working on a range of gas industry safety and risk issues in the UK and overseas. The majority of his work has been on high pressure pipelines and related plant.

Harry joined the Society in 1981 and became a Council member in 1988. He has chaired the External Affairs Committee since 1989, was Chairman in 1993 and 2000, and President for the years 1997 to 1999. He also co-ordinates the group which advises and supports members who apply to be registered with the Engineering Council as Chartered or Incorporated Engineers, through the joint membership arrangement with the Society of Environmental Engineers. He was a founder member of the Midlands Branch and is a past Chairman and the current Treasurer.

Qualifications: B.Sc., C.Phys. C.Sci. C.Eng. MIGEM, Hon.F.SaRS. M.Inst.P.

Mike McCarthy BSc MSc MSaRS MCMI

Mike is a reliability and management consultant with Wilde Analysis Ltd who are the distributor for ReliaSoft™ products and services in the UK and Ireland.

Mike is a council member of the Safety and Reliability Society and a member of the Chartered Management Institute.

He holds a degree in Physics and a masters degree in Industrial Engineering

Mike has always been interested in how things fail. He has worked as an electron microscopist, in a materials science research group (small failures) and has held Reliability and Service manager roles in two of the world’s largest construction equipment manufacturers (big failures).

Mike has been using reliability engineering tools and techniques for nearly 20 years. They have made a critical impact to his career – without them the task of reducing warranty costs and dealing with product recall issues on a global scale would have been even more difficult to successfully manage.

Mike’s working life now is spent trying to understand why products and systems fail, predicting how many will fail in the hands of customers and identifying corrective actions that either fix the problem or mitigate the risk to the client and the customer.

Mike spent a lot of time training engineers (and some managers) in the use of reliability techniques such as Weibull analysis, Reliability Block Diagrams and Fault Tree Analysis.

He believes every engineer and product manager should have a working knowledge of reliability and safety issues and applicable techniques. His current area of special interest is the application of reliability methods in engineering simulation – particularly Finite Element Analysis.

John Pearce

John is currently a Senior Principal Consultant leading R&M work for Atkins Defence.

He trained as a Mechanical Engineer at the Royal Military College of Science, Shrivenham, Wiltshire following a technician apprenticeship with the Ministry of Defence (MoD). Subsequently he joined a fork lift truck company; Boss Trucks and Equipment, as a Supplier Quality Assurance Engineer with responsibility for maintenance of the quality of supply of a range of parts and assemblies onto the production line. He then joined Rex Thompson and Partners (now part of Atkins) as a reliability engineer in 1989 and since then he has worked on many defence and civilian Safety and Reliability based projects.

John has over 20 years experience of providing R&M modelling, analysis and management advice. I also have extensive experience in risk based safety techniques and project management. Recent work has included the support to National Air Traffic Services (NATS) in provision of Safety assurance of systems comprising the new Terminal Control (TC) facility at Swanwick. Prior to that, he was the System House (SH) R&M manager for the Future Rapid Effect System (FRES) for over two years. FRES is the largest armoured vehicle procurement programme in UK history.

John has provided R&M modelling and advice to many defence and civilian programmes including:

 Vehicle projects such as FRES, Wheeled Tanker, Challenger II and a variety of Logistic vehicles reliability trials plus civilian work for a rail rolling stock manufacturer

 Maritime defence projects such as Type 45 Destroyer, Bay Class Landing Ship, Future Carrier and air defence missile programmes

 Command, Control and Communication projects including establishment of the initial Safety Management System for the Defence Information Infrastructure (DII) Programme and R&M support to Command and Satellite Communications Systems.

John has also designed and provided training courses to MoD and industry personnel in both R&M and Safety techniques, including provision of training in the R&M modelling tool RAM4, developed jointly by Atkins and the MoD.

He is a Chartered Engineer and Member of The Institution of Mechanical Engineers and a council member of the Safety and Reliability Society.

Mike Sleath

Mike Sleath, Council member (Chairman October 2006 – October 2007)

After the 3-year Chairman cycle concluded in October 2008, Mike reverted to being a Council member without specific roles (although he has retained an unofficial proof-reading role for newsletters and journal papers, due to his innate spelling and grammar pedantry!). In fact since being elected to SaRS Council (October 2004, this is only the second year outside of the 3-year Chairman cycle!) He expects to continue on Council for at least another 3 years, assuming there are no significant career or life changes in that time!

Mike has been working in Reliability and related disciplines for almost as long as SaRS has existed. Mike moved into Reliability from environmental testing in 1981 when employed by Plessey Assessment Services.

Although he may not have realised it at the time, the FMECAs he was working on in 1981 were very closely linked to someone else’s safety analysis, and he was subconsciously learning just how close the two disciplines are in any engineering development.

It all came together for him in 2000 thanks to the MoD’s Ship Safety Management Office safety training in 2000. Mike now works for QinetiQ in aircraft safety evaluation.

But that’s just his professional career. For most of the last 2 decades, in his leisure time he was an active worker in the field of road safety. He took his Advanced driving test in 1983, and in 1984 he became the secretary of the local group – wanting to put something back into the voluntary body that helped him a year earlier. Two years later he had been hooked by motorcycling, and a few more years later he was helping to create a local group committed to helping other motorcyclists improve their own skills and safety on the road and pass their Institute of Advanced Motorists (IAM) test.

In 2003 he responded to a request for help in forming a new branch of SaRS in the south of England. At the initiation meeting, he returned to his former company (albeit only as a visitor) of BMT RCL, and renewed acquaintances with former colleagues. The new branch was of course Solent Branch, and he currently serves as treasurer of the branch.

Pete Stanton, MA, BSc, CEng, MSaRS, MIET

Pete currently works as a Senior Safety Risk Advisor with Network Rail, based in London. His role mainly involves developing, disseminating and monitoring the use of the safety risk appraisal processes for the company, along with carrying out complex risk assessments and providing technical input to the company’s strategic risk management process.

He has spent 18 years in various parts of the railway industry, initially as a Reliability Engineer working on InterCity rolling stock looking at issues such as maintenance policy, reliability growth and warranty support. Since then he has worked in risk and safety engineering for contractors, consultancies and for the last six years for the mainline infrastructure manager writing safety cases for new equipment and the safety management system for organisations as well as developing risk assessment tools to study specific issues, one example being incursions of road vehicles onto the railway.

One particular project resulted in a paper published in the Autumn 2002 SaRS Journal (Vol 22 No 3) titled ‘Apportioning Safety Integrity Levels’.

Prior to joining the railways, Pete worked in the telecommunications industry as a Performance Engineer for the System X public telephone exchange project, carrying out Monte Carlo simulation modelling to assess speed and capacity of the system.

Pete became a member of SaRS in 1997, joining Council in 2005 and then taking over as Treasurer (now renamed Finance Director) in 2006. He has a degree in Mathematics from Oxford University and also qualifications in Engineering and Management from Open University.

Ian Stanley

Ian has been the Chairman of the North of Scotland (NoS) Branch for the past nine years and has been at the forefront of arranging the NoS Annual Dinner and associated CPD events. He was co-opted to the SaRS Council in May 2010.

Ian is a Chartered and Registered Professional Engineer (NPER3) with an MSc in Safety and Reliability Engineering and a PhD specialising in Structural Reliability of ageing assets with a particular focus on offshore steel jacket structures. He has an interest in the use of advanced reliability techniques, in particular FORM/SORM and Bayesian methodologies.

Prior to receiving his MSc and PhD Ian had a long career in the mining, tunnelling, civil construction and environmental management industries as an operator, consultant and regulator.

Whilst in the mining industry, Ian became the first non mining engineer in Australia to become a First Class Registered Underground Mine Manager. He was also a Captain of an Underground Mine Rescue Team.

Ian is currently working with Royal Dutch Shell as a Senior Consultant – Reliability Management. In this role Ian works extensively with RAM modelling and other reliability techniques during project concept selection, FEED and detailed design stages of new developments. The role also involves the analysis of failure data and being the Shell Deputy for the OREDA Steering Committee. He also has experience in Technical Safety as applied to the offshore oil and gas industry.

Ian was recently appointed as a Shell/Royal Academy of Engineering Visiting Teaching Fellow in Engineering Design at the University of Aberdeen wherein he will be lecturing to MSc students, supervising MSc Dissertation studies and reviewing course curriculum.

Ian is currently working with other members of the SaRS Council with the development of competency standards for Technical Safety and Reliability Engineers – his focus being the oil and gas industry.

Ian is married to Diane – they have one daughter Madelaine.

Richard Vote BSc(Eng) BA CEng CMarEng FSaRS MIMechE MIMarEST MCMI

Dick Vote is JBCL’s Technical Director and currently responsible for the technical and business verification in the development of 3 large Heavy Oil Refineries He has participated in many successful major oil and gas design and development projects and also in performance improvement instituted in mature assets for major operators, although not without resistance by some. His 25 years experience also includes independent fast track major operator’s fleet performance review stimulated at board level, a review of North Sea performance for the DTI and personally initiated and demonstrated an integrity management process put in place for another major operator that lifted a whole fleet safety improvement notice. The original inspiration to specialise in reliability assessment came almost 30 years ago when in a ship design project he also inherited the original Systems Availability Model in the MoD, reactivated it and despite the computing limitations demonstrated pretty accurate prediction of what happened in real life in the first of a ship class. Since then he has been active in developing benchmarking performance and feedback based validation processes for the energy industries incorporating optimised maintenance strategies and a holistic measured balance in safety integrity. He has acted as an independent observer at the HSE stimulated “Step Change in Integrity” initiative for the North Sea and advises senior lawyers on risk matters. He acted as site services risk consultant to the Civil Aviation Authority National Air Traffic Control Services for some years. A founding Fellow and member of Council of the Safety and Reliability Society and from 2007 Chairman of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers Safety and Reliability Group. He represents the Institute of Marine Engineering Science and Technology at the Inter Institutional Group on Safety and participated in the Engineering Council ad hoc working group on Risk Guidelines

2010 Safety and Reliability Society Annual General Meeting Minutes

Minutes of the twenty-ninth Annual General Meeting of the Safety and Reliability Society held at NATS, Limited, 4000 Parkway, Whiteley, Fareham, Hants, PO15 7FL on the 29^th September 2010

Present: Ten members were present together with twenty-six proxy votes meant that the meeting was adequately quorate.

Trevor Cockram as Chairman welcomed everyone to the meeting. Trevor thanked those who had submitted proxy votes and accepted apologies for absence. Apologies had also been received from David Holland, Dick Vote, Ian Stanley, Harry Hopkins, Andrew Buchan and Mike McCarthy.

2009 AGM. The minutes, reports and accounts for the Society 2009 AGM had been placed on the website. Their acceptance was proposed by R J Denning and seconded by J J Pearce. The resolution was carried by thirty-six votes for, nem con.

Council Chairman’s report. The Chairman reported that this had been a very industrious year for the Society. Trevor Cockram spoke about a year where the Society had lost five founder members. This was also a positive year for SaRS as the Society continued to collaborate successfully on events and to produce high quality, well attended meetings and events. During this year Council met to discuss the Haddon-Cave review and formulated a response that was widely distributed and well received. Trevor thanked the Council for their help during the year and stated that he had enjoyed his term in office. Trevor’s full report can be found in the Annual Report of the Society for 2010.

Peter Stanton, the Society Treasurer, then gave a financial report for the previous financial year. The main points were the success of the budget in that the group had effectively made a 6K loss due to unexpected expenditure on the office . The SARS Ltd financial statement had been tabled at the SARS Ltd AGM. The budget for 2009/10 for the Society was tabled. The budget was generated in a way that shows options for low and high results in addition to an average, all based on the excellent output for the group over the past year. These were based on low and high results in the key drivers. To date, all key drivers were performing on budget.

Peter Stanton reported that once again the Society had claimed gift aid successfully and Affiliate membership is rising.

It was resolved that the Council Report and Accounts should be accepted. Proposed by A D Bain and seconded by J J Pearce. Accepted nem con.

It was resolved that Voisey and Co Chartered Accountants should be reappointed as auditors. Proposed by R J Denning seconded by J J Pearce. Accepted nem con.

It was resolved that the revised subscription levels should be accepted.

2011 2008/9/10

Fellow 126 122

Member 81 78

Associate member 51 49

Associate 51 49

Retired Member 48.60 47

Retired Fellow 75.60 74

Student 16 17

Affiliate 590

Academic Affiliate 290

The entrance fee for Affiliate membership was raised to £40.

Proposed P Stanton and seconded by A D Bain. Carried nem con

External Affairs Committee

The External Affairs Committee report was read out on behalf of Mr Hopkins. The report covered the areas of Organisations, Society Procedures, Registration, Affiliates and Technical Business. The full report can be found in the Annual Report for the Society 2010.

Membership and Grading Committee

It was reported by Richard Denning that membership was stable and the retention rate was good. The M&G Committee had undergone changes during the year and had benefitted from a review as turnaround was now quicker. The committee had recruited several members during the year. The membership and Grading Committee Report can be found in the Annual Report for the Society 2010

Publications Committee

This report was given by Richard Denning and covered areas such as the Society Newsletter, the Website and the Journal, all of which had been successful throughout the year. The full report can be found in the Annual Report of the Society 2010

Branches Committee

John Pearce reported that a sustained effort into Branch coordination would take place going into 2010/11

Election of Council Members and Officers

Nominations:

The following people were re-elected following nominations received as follows:

Mike McCarthy

Mike Sleath

Ian Stanley

Dick Vote

John McDermid was co-opted for one year.

The following person was elected following nomination received:

Jo Hursell

The following people will leave Council during the year and Trevor Cockram thanked them for their input:

Stephen Jones

There being no other business the Chairman thanked Council officers for their contributions and welcomed new members. The new Chairman, Mr S O Clark was introduced. He took the chair and thanked Dr T J Cockram for his service as Chairman. He then introduced himself and his aims and aspirations for the Society throughout the coming year.

The Society AGM was closed at 18.30 and was followed by a presentation by Dr David Smith on behalf of the Solent Branch

Jacqueline Christodoulou

Secretary/Chief Executive

10^th November 2010