The Need for a Community for System and Functional Safety Professionals

Abstract

In March 2011, following several years as the successful Functional Safety Professional Network (FSPN), IET members and others formed a new ‘safety community’, principally to represent the interests of practicing system safety and functional safety experts. This paper argues that the considerations of safety engineering are additional to both technological and application knowledge and that ‘safety’ should be considered as a discipline in its own right. In particular the safety discipline is unique, both because of its focus on adverse and unwanted behaviour of a system and by the breadth of its knowledge requirement involving as it does a broad range of technical, application and management skills and techniques, together with the additional knowledge of failure analyses and control techniques. Engineers and other professionals practicing in these areas have a keen desire for professional recognition of their needs and interests and are keen to support a community in this area. Whilst there are differing views on whether the community needs to be a single body, as a first step system and functional safety experts have set up a community for IET registrants, with the aim of supporting a federated approach to working within and across application and technology divides.