4. System Safety Process

Including safety in all phases of a system development project is required to ensure an inherent view of safety, designing all safety prescriptions from the start in a proactive way, instead of a reactive approach where fixes are only applied following the recorded incidents or accidents. Being proactive about safety is an essential consideration in system safety engineering today. This chapter introduces the required ground for having safety considerations and all relevant safety processes built into the project development life cycle. Each phase of the inherent safety process is detailed, and connections are made with the traditional processes in engineering and project management, emphasizing the need for proactive safety from the inception of the project idea (pre-project phase) all the way into deployment. Artifacts produced in each phase, as well as the traceability that needs to be maintained among them, are laid out. Additionally, important sub-processes are algorithmically defined, with specific actions prescribed to bring the risks down to the tolerable zone.