Report from 22nd June 2023

A short piece on Artificial Intelligence and issues relating to safety was presented.

R&M Specialist Seminar 2023: To be held in Abbey Wood and Virtually on 19th October 2023. 3 probable presentations so far Warrior CSP Reliability Growth Test, Dependability and Testability.  Call for sponsors, speakers and trade stands out now.

DE&S Update: Director Logistics & Support Directorate – John Farrow has taken over as the 2*.

Standards & Guidance:

  • The following website was identified as providing a list of  the dependability definitions from IEC 60050-192 http://www.electropedia.org
  • Defence Standards
    • Def Stan 00-042 Part 1 (One-Shot Devices/Systems) – COI workshop held 28 Nov 22 – Internal review of comments now complete. Document being updated.
    • Def Stan 00-042 Part 7 (Reliability Testing) – Issue 2 published incorporating section 7 and annex of Def Stan 00-044.
    • Def Stan 00-044 Issue 2, amd. 1 (Reliability and Maintainability Data Collection and Classification) Plan is still to replace it with ADMP-03 and Def Stan 00-042 Part 7 but due to the number of references to it outside of R&M, will be rolled over until all those are cleared.
    • Def Stan 00-042 Part 6 (Maintainability Demonstration) – work is starting on the 5 year review of this standard. Other than referencing it is not anticipated there will be any other changes made.
    • IEC 60300-3-4: 2022 has been reviewed internally and it is believed to be a good additional reference for inclusion in the next update of Def Stan 00-040. Seeking CoDERM members agreement to this.
  • NATO Standards
    • ADMP-04: New document in development to give guidance on what ‘Governments’ contracting for Dependability work should be considering. Final draft due Q4 2023. Will be circulated through National SQEP for review.
    • Reviewing IEC 60300-3-4 to consider if it can wholly replace or be referenced within ADMP-01.
  • ASD Standards

Health of the Competence – STEM Futures

  • New STEM Futures agreement has been signed by DE&S. Now being run by ‘Go Science’ who directly brief the Prime Minister/Government,  headed up by the Government Chief Scientific Adviser (Sir Patrick Vallance).
  • Given presentations to University of Wales Trinity St David in November, Manchester University in April and Loughborough University in May, with all requesting repeats at the start of the next academic year. Working with Exeter, UWE and Cranfield Universities to find suitable time for presentations to their students.
  • Looking for additional members from the CoDERM committee ​to support the lectures and looking for opportunities to develop placements for Industry and MOD staff. 

Reliable Software

  • US DoD released a document titled ‘Reliable Software Statement of Work Language Guidance’ that provides guidance for reliability engineers for writing statements of work for R&M. The guidance is for selecting the relevant tasks for reliable software based on the type and size of the program, current phase of acquisition, and maturity of the software.
  • A UK version of the document is to be developed in collaboration with the DE&S Software and System Engineering Teams. Exploratory work will be undertaken over the Summer and Autumn to understand what should be included.