RISK MANAGEMENT IN ENGINEERING
The report will be a minimum of 2000 words in length undertake professional theoretical research on the allocated topic. It is expected that this research will extend beyond the material that is presented in the Brief of Engagement, the Standards report must include a variety of material that supports the discussion and all content must be fully referenced.
Need to provide both Power point and work file
Brief of Engagement: ‘Learning from engineering failures' Identify and describe in detail one engineering failure that occurred prior to the year 1900
Braamfontein explosion
On 19 February 1896, an explosives train at Braamfontein station in Johannesburg, loaded with between 56 and 60 tons of blasting gelatine destined for the burgeoning gold mines of the Witwatersrand and having been standing for three and a half days in searing heat, was struck by a shunting train. The load exploded, leaving a crater in the Braamfontein rail yard 60 metres (200 ft) long, 50 metres (160 ft) wide and 8 metres (26 ft) deep. The explosion was heard up to 200 kilometres (120 mi) away. 75 people were killed, and more than 200 injured. Surrounding suburbs were destroyed, and roughly 3000 people lost their homes. Almost every window in Johannesburg was broken.
- Large and widespread (it must be an engineering failure for which you can readily obtain information.)
- an engineer who was causally involved in each failure and answer the following questions for each failure:
- How would you have done things differently?
- What should have been the barriers that prevented the failure occurring?
- What lessons were learnt from this failure?
- What were changes and/or improvements to Law, Codes, Standards, work practices and technology that flowed from this failure?
For each failure:
- Define the Inherent Risk.
- Describe in detail the causal chain (ie show causality from the root cause(s) to the failure event) and provide a causal diagram for each failure (as an Appendix).
- Conduct a risk assessment to quantitatively verify the magnitude of the risk exposure in terms of deaths/injuries/damages/costs using a recognised method.
- Would the pre-failure mitigation have passed the HSE Tolerability of Risk (ToR) test (ie you need to demonstrate the consequences of the failure in terms of deaths/injuries/damages/costs to confirm whether they were/weren't 10x or more greater than the sacrifice/investment entailed with the implementation of any pre-accident countermeasures).
Engineering Failures are typically the result of:
- Human factors - both ‘ethical' and accidental failure;
- Design flaws - typically a result of unprofessional or unethical behaviour;
- Materials failure; and
- Extreme conditions.
Engineering failures can be categorised based on the size of the impacted region, and the level of impact on the region. Size of impact:
Widespread - although the causing incident was localised it has effects distributed over a large geographical area.
Level of impact:
Large - Catastrophic failure, with extensive loss of life, and severe irreparable property damage.
Tolerability of risk (TOR). TOR is used considerations, utility-based conditions that entail the societal unacceptability of risky situations, and technology-based cases that tend to ignore the tradeoffs between benefits and costs.
The HSE includes principles that require risks to be reduced to as low as reasonably practical (ALARP). This allows the cost of reducing risks to be considered when determining whether to invest in a risk reducing activity. In general, project owners are required to invest proportionately higher levels of funds towards reducing higher risks, particularly for a risk with severe consequences.
The failures should be analysed to determine the costs that should have been invested in the project to prevent the failure, and the cost of the consequences of the failure with regards to death, injuries, damages and cost. For each of these failures, the costs that were incurred after the project failure shall be calculated. What it would have cost to put measures in place to avoid the failure shall also be calculated. The multiplier or ratio is used as a measure to confirm whether society should have invested more funds to prevent this failure1 . The results should be consolidated into a summary table.
By analysing past failures, engineers can prevent future failures, both minor and catastrophic. It is often the catastrophic failure that receives professional and public attention, but as you will discover, catastrophic failures are comprised of multiple smaller errors in design, communication and/or judgement. Engineering is a constantly evolving discipline due to both advances in technology and the integration of lessons learnt through failures into laws, standards, work practices and technology.
Despite the wide variety in the size and impact of the failures in this Assessment
- All projects should include a risk management process and a thorough assessment of the risks.
- Risks that contributed to the catastrophic failure could have been identified and mitigated through a risk management process.
- Independent reviews of design drawings and specifications greatly increase the chance of detecting human errors and failures to comply with existing codes, laws and regulation. Human error will never be abolished, but safeguards can help mitigate the impact.
- Time, cost, quality and scope constraints can have significant 1 Health Safety and Executive (2001), Reducing Risks Protecting People HSE's decision-making process [Online], negative impacts on the outcome of the project or product. While all projects operate within these constraints, the impacts of these constraints need to be part of the risk assessment.