Effective Independent Safety Assessment

The purpose of an Independent Safety Auditor (ISA) is to audit, assess and review processes used in a project to show compliance to best and appropriate practice and to assess the adequacy of the evidence. The main objective of using an ISA in any project is to provide assurance that a contractor considers and addresses safety issues. An ISA needs to be convinced that the process captures, understands and mitigates the hazards and identifies safety requirements associated with a system. This is carried out by a review of the safety analysis and support documents that leads to the development of the system Safety Case. In addition, it may be beneficial if the ISA conducts some independent analysis to add to the safety evidence or assist in the understanding of the system and its properties. This paper describes the role of the ISA as used on a major UK MoD Procurement. It describes the use of independent analysis using creative thinking to develop a hazard model that provides understanding of the system level hazards and their association with the subsystems.