Safety engineering

Pedigree

Altran Praxis has been leading the field of safety engineering since the advent of large-scale software intensive safety-critical systems. Praxis has been involved in the development and early application of key safety standards such as IEC 61508, the UK’s Defence Standard 00-56 and engineering safety management guidance such as the rail industry’s Yellow Book. Praxis has provided advice and support on safety to many world-class businesses, government departments and regulators.

All our engineers are qualified appropriately, many with influential positions in professional bodies. For example both past and present Chairmen of the Safety and Reliability Society (SaRS) are employed by Praxis.

Safety is core to our business and we see leadership from the top being crucial. This means that the Safety Director for Praxis is also our Managing Director. A mature Safety Management System supports all our work.

Focus

Praxis focuses on supporting clients:

• To strive to deliver the precise value in safety evidence required by the customer and to minimise the waste in collecting that evidence.
• To integrate all aspects of safety on large, complex or novel engineering projects, often software intensive. Increasingly this integration has to cover the seamless inclusion of security and environmental management.
• To bring about organisational improvement in safety management, particularly from board level downwards.
• To bring insight and added value by using our cross-sector experience covering all safety disciplines.
• To provide justified independent assessments, audits or views of safety.

Praxis also supports the advancement of the wider safety engineering community through participation in conferences and the generation of whitepapers.

Approach

The core of the Praxis safety approach is goal-based reasoning and argumentation. Our approach is to strive to ensure a complete and unambiguous understanding of the safety requirements, then to develop arguments that show deterministically that the requirements have been met. Praxis views design arguments and associated evidence as key, more important than process or standards compliance. We use a risk-based approach to safety engineering and ensure that we deliver precisely the safety assurance required, no more, no less.

All our safety activities are subject to independent internal safety governance under our Safety Management System.

Example Safety Engineering projects

• Development of enterprise level safety management requirements and a safety governance regime for a global defence business.
• Safety analysis for a control and instrumentation system for materials handling in the nuclear sector.
• Safety design review for the Renault F1 team and several premium and supercar automotive manufacturers including steer-by-wire systems.
• Notified Body certification for the Tilt and Speed Supervision System (TASS) on the Alstom Pendolino and Bombardier Super Voyager trains against the European Railway System Directives for Interoperability.
• Definition and introduction of a safety management and assessment approach for an Australian railway operator.
• Full safety case development for a NATO air traffic management system.
• Development of 80 weapons safety cases for air launch munitions systems to the UK Ministry of Defence requirements JSP 520 using Goal Structured Notation.
• Independent safety assessor for a major rail signalling upgrade in the Netherlands.
• Technical safety review and assessment of the application of the Nuclear Installations Inspectorate’s safety assurance principles and standards (IEC 61513) for the nuclear new build programme.

Why Altran Praxis for Safety Engineering?

• Suitably qualified and experienced engineers and consultants covering a wide range of safety disciplines.
• Highly skilled in the practical application of safety engineering techniques such as HAZOPS, FFA and FTA.
• Experience of the application of national and international safety standards and practices across many industries including IEC 61508, CENELEC 5012n series, UK Defence Standard 00-56, UK CAA Regulatory Objectives SW01 and ISO26262.
• Expertise in electronic safety cases.
• Proven ability to deal with and de-risk the most difficult safety challenges, in terms of severity of safety issues, complexity and/or novelty.
• Expertise in safety assessment and safety case production trusted by regulators.

Capabilities