System Safety in Organizational Safety Decision Making

The two cardinal aspects of safety are intrinsic safety and its demonstration. A key element of demonstrating system safety is the organizational structure that is best placed to ensure and demonstrate that high standards of safety are clearly in place for its products, processes and facilities. This is particularly important for high-consequence industries. Accomplishing this depends on a number of organizational integrated layers of scrutiny, ranging from the accumulation of arguments and evidence at the lower levels to final executive decision making. The latter holds final responsibility and accountability. Potential problems arise because products, processes and facilities are becoming more and more complex and the associated supporting data inordinately large. In turn, the organizational processes that enable top-level decision makers to make wise and informed decisions are themselves becoming more complex and difficult. This final stage requires clear and transparent communication. Organizations have moved more towards the application of peer review to support final decision making but, nevertheless, one still expects the final decision-making layer to provide further independent scrutiny to enhance overall confidence in the process. This would represent a three-tier independent process — strength in depth. This is the subject of the paper.