By John H. Reed, Chairman NTSB (1969-1976)

[Editor’s Note: This address was delivered in the 1st Annual International System Safety Symposium in July 1973. It was originally published in Volume 10 Issue 1 of Hazard Prevention (now Journal of System Safety). Additional formatting, hyperlinks, and emphasis have been added, but the text is unchanged.]

I sincerely appreciate the opportunity to meet with you today to keynote this First Annual International System Safety Symposium. It is always a pleasure to share ideas with outstanding professional organizations such as yours.

I was particularly interested in the sub-theme of this symposium “The Application Of System Safety To The Protection Of The Public.” Safety, especially of the-traveling public, is, of course, the primary concern of the National Transportation Safety Board. It is the reason for our existence. 

In these remarks, I would like to highlight for you the challenges facing us in protecting the traveling public, now and in the foreseeable future. I am sure you will agree with me that we are indeed faced with a tremendous challenge if we wish to control the appalling death toll of our mobile citizenry. The use of the term “appalling” is not intended just for dramatic effect – the toll is truly appalling.

As former Transportation Secretary Volpe once noted: “Auto crashes have killed off more Americans than all our violent crimes and all the wars in our history.” We cannot let this loss continue unabated. The federal government is now attacking these losses through various forms of legislation action. However, the problems which face us cannot be solved by government alone. We need the dedicated efforts of safety specialists from all segments of the industry if we are to meet the challenge.

Before I proceed, let me briefly acquaint you with the role of the National Transportation Safety Board. The Safety Board was created in 1966 as an autonomous body within the Department of Transportation to serve essentially as the overseer of U.S. transportation safety. We have safety responsibility for all aviation transportation, and for the highway, railroad, marine and pipeline modes of transportation. The Board is composed of five members who are appointed by the President and confirmed by the Senate. We have two operating bureaus – the Bureau of Aviation Safety and the Bureau of Surface Transportation Safety, a much smaller but equally active organization. The directors of both bureaus, Mr. C.O. Miller and Mr. Henry Wakeland, as I am sure most of you know, are active members of your society. In fact, Mr. Miller is a charter member as well as a past president. I am pleased to note that both Mr. Miller and Mr. Wakeland were instrumental in the formulation of this program.

The mission of the Safety Board is twofold. We are charged with the determination of the cause or causes of all aviation accidents, and of selected surface accidents. It is also our responsibility to use this knowledge gained from our investigations to prevent recurrence of similar accidents. We do this predominantly by defining problem areas and by recommending to the appropriate parties changes which will correct the conditions which led to the accidents.

Now I would like to discuss the current safety status of our national transportation system. When measured by almost any yardstick, highway safety stands out as the number one transportation safety problem in the U.S.A. Out of a total of 60,789 transportation fatalities in 1972 (all statistics are from 1972), highway accidents accounted for 55,358 lives. In addition, the sixteen-plus million highway accidents which occurred in that year were responsible for about two-million injuries and a total property loss to the nation in excess of five-billion dollars.

The next biggest killer among our transportation modes was our railroad system, with 1,922 fatalities, followed closely by the marine mode with 1,871 total fatalities. In these two modes, 70 to 80 percent of the total fatalities were those associated with the general public – grade crossings in the case of the railroads, and recreational boaters in the marine mishaps.

The next mode, in descending order of the number of casualties, is aviation, with a total of 1,534 lives taken. Although our air carriers accounted for only 190 of these, the impact of air carrier accidents should not be minimized. Few fatal accidents create more public concern than do those involving air carrier airplanes, and the relatively few fatal air carrier accidents account for a disproportionately high percentage of the total property and equipment loss resulting ‘from all-transportation accidents. Nor is the true hazard potential reflected in these statistics, since the crash of a fully loaded Boeing 747 into a highly populated area could produce an immense death toll.

Pipeline accidents killed relatively few people last year. but here again, accident statistics can be misleading since the potential for catastrophic losses is possibly greater in the pipeline area than in any other mode.

At this point let us look at what the future holds in store. We have seen ever-increasing sophistication in all transportation systems, as evidenced by the evolution of the DC-3 into the DC-IO, and we will see a rapid growth of complex new systems such as high-speed railroad trains. The increased complexity of these systems creates greater problems in the discovery of hazards and assessment of risks, increases the cost of safety improvements, and complicates the investigation of accidents involving these vehicles.

Another problem which is challenging our ingenuity is the transportation of hazardous materials. Our expanding energy usage is resulting in the transportation of much more fuel of all types. This, of course, creates greater hazard potential for the modes involved, especially as these cargos are being concentrated into larger loads. We have seen examples of this in our supertankers, in the increased size of barge tows, and in large, widebodied jet cargo freighters.

Although our past efforts have been primarily safety oriented, our problems are no longer limited to those of saving life and limb. Social considerations now demand that we reduce the waste and pollution caused by transportation losses. In this respect, problems such as reduction or containment of oil spills from our tankships loom as a large challenge to all of us, and they will be increasingly more important in the years ahead.

Now, having reviewed the challenge facing us, what are we to do about it?

The Safety Board sees two general areas in which we believe your efforts can produce maximum results. The first of these is the need for further utilization of your knowledge and technology in all modes of transportation. Then, we need a rigorous application of system safety principles to our national transportation problems in order to direct our national safety efforts and obtain maximum benefits from our limited fund resources.

With regard to the first area, the technology and lessons learned in aviation should be applied to other forms of transportation. Those of you associated with air carrier aviation are fortunate indeed, because your accident prevention technology is highly developed compared to that of some other modes, such as highways or recreational boating. The present air carrier accident rate is evidence of continuous attention to safety.

With respect to aviation, at least, I think we can say that system safety has come of age, and that this is the time to consolidate our gains. We need to standardize and simplify techniques, and to improve the communication of practical solutions throughout the entire transportation system. This is the reason I was happy to learn of the first international gathering of system safety specialists. This is indeed a major step in that communication.

The Safety Board, since its establishment, has been anxious to disseminate new information on scientific safety methods. Our first system safety-based recommendations were made just a few months after our inception. Our two bureau directors are firmly committed to the use of this approach when it can be helpful, both in our internal accident investigation procedures and in our general safety efforts. The Board is the only agency within the Department of Transportation where transportation specialists in all modes are gathered in close association. Our success in transferring technologies among modes is one of the major forms of improvement of Department of Transportation safety approaches: We have actively transferred system safety techniques from aerospace into rapid transit, pipeline, and the marine fields; we have promoted the use of highway crash injury prevention techniques in the railroad and rapid transit fields; and we have been instrumental in applying aviation crash survival and escape requirements to the intercity bus and school bus industries.

As a result of the gains made, we believe that a strong foothold has been established for the methods which you have done so much to establish in the defense electronics and aerospace fields. We have made advances in almost all means of transportation; however, we are conscious of the fact that the national effort in some areas – notably highway safety – is still largely limited to finding remedies after the accident. This after-the-fact approach has evolved because, unfortunately, in the various means of transportation where the need is greatest – general highway operations, recreational boating, and to a lesser degree, general aviation – system safety has not yet been generally applied. System safety efforts are best applied in systems characterized by unitary control and well defined and controlled operations. In highway passenger car operations, there exists a diffusion of authority which makes changes difficult. Even in this mode, however, certain individual elements of the system safety technology such as gross hazard, failure mode and effects, and fault tree analyses might be profitably employed. However, I believe that much stronger effort will be required in order to solve the general problem of evolving our highway safety technology into a predictive, first time safe approach.

We at the Safety Board believe that, in the surface modes, system safety is closest to realization in rapid transit operations, followed by pipelines, and then by any new project starting on the drawing board. In these and in other areas, we have made recommendations which have advanced the cause of system safety. The earliest of these recommendations was that system safety concepts be applied in the Tracked Air Cushion Research Vehicle project. Then we recommended system safety application to the Washington Metro system. We also recommended that the Urban Mass Transportation Administration require submission of system safety plans as a condition for every request for capital grants and. in a special study entitled. “A Systematic Approach to Pipeline Safety,” the Board recommended the application of system safety to the entire field of pipeline safety.

Actions which we believe are highly significant have been taken on our recommendations. For example, in response to our recommendation, the Urban Mass Transportation Administration hired a system safety staff and developed a plan for implementing system safety in projects involving approximately one billion dollars of capital equipment. Also, recommendations regarding pipeline safety developed in our pipeline study are being actively taken into consideration by the Gas Piping Standards Committee of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers.

In addition to the statutorily authorized promotional aspects of our efforts, the Safety Board also has a functional role in the system safety cycle. In this cycle there is a task which is often simply defined as feedback. This, as you know, is the stage when service experience is fed back into the system to assist in identifying potential hazards and potential problem areas.

2023 Accident Facts:

• U.S. automobile fatalities peaked in 1972 around 55,000 deaths
• U.S. automobile fatalities reached their lowest since then in 2011 at 32,500
• Since 2011, U.S. fatalities are up 32%
• Worldwide, approximately 1.35 million people die on roads each year.

The Safety Board detects safety deficiencies by our accident investigation activities. and we make these known to the public and to those with safety responsibility by our recommendations.

Our accident experience also provides a valuable source of statistical information about our aviation transportation systems. Such records permit identification of significant trends by comparing the present operation of a system with its past operation. At present, we have this capability only for aviation. In the surface modes we are not only hampered by the lack of adequate data sources, but also by the fact that there is no single centralized source for storing all accident data. The Board is now striving to have established a unified, collocated accident data system which encompasses all modes.

With respect to the paucity of accident data, I should note that the NTSB is the only federal-level organization which investigates or determines cause for accidents in all modes. We are also, I might add, the only agency which investigates solely to aid accident prevention, with no interest in law enforcement proceedings. Thus, we believe that the Safety Board, by acting as the focal point for safety activities of all modes, is ideally situated to provide the impetus for system safety activities. We are a primary source of intermodal accident data. We can serve as a clearing house for safety ideas because of the public exposure we obtain by issuing reports and recommendations, by holding forums and public hearings, and by participation of our personnel in activities such as this symposium.

In summary, I believe that because of the efforts of many dedicated persons such as yourselves, transportation safety has, in some modes, reached an admirable level in this country. But we can’t rest on our laurels. We must now strive to further improve the safety levels of all modes. and we must master the problems which our rapidly advancing transportation systems will be presenting us in the future. These are problems which cross all technological, economic, sociological, and political boundaries. They are problems which will only be solved by a rigorous, total systems approach to our national transportation needs. This is a job which will require the combined efforts of government, industry, and our universities, and you ladies and gentlemen are the nucleus of the task force which must meet this challenge. I wish you well.

John H. Reed (January 5, 1921 – October 31, 2012) was the 2nd Chair of the National Transportation Safety Board and the 67th Governor of Maine. Later, Mr. Reed was twice appointed ambassador to Sri Lanka and the Maldives.

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By Donald M. Layton

[Editor’s Note: This opinion piece originally appeared in Volume 9 Issue 3 of Hazard Prevention (now Journal of System Safety) in January-February 1973. It is unchanged except for formatting and minor corrections.]

Anyone who has attempted to recruit new members for the System Safety Society has heard the question. “What does the Society do, and what can it do for me? ”

Some of the answers to this multiple-question may be found in an excellent folder which is available from the Society Administrative Office, 6060 Duke Street, Suite 101. Alexandria. VA 22304 [Ed.: see here].

Included in this folder are two items of prime importance to prospective members and to present members as well. These are the listings of the objectives and the activities of the System Safety Society.

OBJECTIVES

1. To advance the state-of-the-art of system safety.

2. To contribute to a meaningful scientific and technological understanding of system safety.

3. To disseminate newly developed knowledge to all interested groups and individuals.

4. To further the development of the professionals engaged in system safety.

5. To improve public understanding of the system safety discipline.

6. To improve the communication of the system safety movement and discipline to all levels of management, engineering, and other professional groups.

Let us consider these objectives and see what is being done, and what could be done to meet them.

The Society was founded in 1962 as a non-profit, professional association and was registered in the State of California as the Aerospace System Safety Society, inasmuch as the formalized principles and the term “system safety” originated in, and was principally applied by, the aerospace industry at that time. The original Society consisted of about thirty members.

With the expansion of the Society’s scope to include all product/system safety activity and personnel in other fields, the label, Aerospace, was dropped from the title in 1966.

Individual and group efforts to achieve the objectives have not been limited to those who wear the “Two Sigma” pin, but many of the members of the System Safety Society have consistently been in the forefront of such activity.

One of the most obvious examples of the improvement of communication and the dissemination of matters of safety interest has been this publication, Hazard Prevention. Begun as a newsletter under the direction of the Society’s Founder, Roger Lockwood, the publication was formalized by its first official Editor, Dr. George A. Peters. When the pressure of his business forced George to relinquish this position Roger once again assumed the leadership until Jim Johncox assumed the Editorship.

The majority of the credit of the current size and format of Hazard Prevention can be given to the last three Presidents of the Society – Jack Parrish, who started the new format; Roy Harris, who started the page growth; and Ed Fosler, who has brought a whole new concept to Associate Editors, increased page count, support through advertising and Corporate Memberships, and increased emphasis on submitted articles.

Discussions had been occurring in the Board of Directors meetings for several years as to the sponsorship of an annual symposium, but with the caution that was derived from the desire to make such a conference a meaningful expression, many delays were incurred. As somewhat of a “trial run.” the Southern California Chapter agreed to sponsor a “mini-symposium” (an idea proposed to the Board of Directors by Willie Hammer of Hughes Aircraft) which proved so successful that they have now completed a second one-day symposium. And now finally, plans are underway for the First Annual International System Safety Symposium to be held in Denver in July 1973 under the Chairmanship of George Cranston.

Now to “old timers” in the Society the above information is well known, but a significant point is centered in these facts. I have mentioned but a few of those active in the Society, but if I were to continue the listing of former Society and Chapter officers, members of the Board of Directors, contributors to Hazard Prevention and participants in the other activities of the System Safety Society, I could. probably identify several dozen SSS members who have been or are now active to some degree.

But several dozen out of a membership that exceeds seven hundred is a rather small percentage!

And so, my fellow Americans: ask not what your country can do for you — ask what you can do for your country.

– John F. Kennedy, Jan 20, 1961

So, before someone asks us what the System Safety Society can do for its members, let us ask ourselves, in a paraphrase of the words of the late President John F. Kennedy, “What can I do for the System Safety Society?”

One of the most obvious things that can be done is the recruitment of new members. There are, of course, the lofty reasons for increasing our membership – reasons such as the improvement of our professional knowledge; making what we have to offer available to all in the field, and the bestowing of our prestige gained  from being members of an august society to others, but there are more practical reasons for encouraging a membership growth. These include the benefits of national (and international) recognition that comes from representing a majority of those involved in System Safety, conservation of financial resources in the way of administrative costs (which increase at a much slower rate than the membership they support), and greater return to the members in the form of services such as local and national meetings, publications, speakers, and Society sponsored pressure on standards and member privileges.

Another way in which each member may be of service is in participation in Chapter and National society affairs. I don’t propose that every member immediately run for an office, but support would be welcome at all levels. At the Chapter level, for those of you who are fortunate enough to be near an active group, assisting with the newsletter, aiding in obtaining speakers, contacting potential members, and even such a simple task as being in charge of the name tags for the meetings o ‘collecting the money for dinner would take some of the load off those few who are doing most of the work.

And don’t forget Hazard Prevention. If you don’t have an article that is anxious to be printed, perhaps you have an idea that someone else could expand so that others might have the benefit of these thoughts. One of the few direct benefits that we offer to the members is this publication, and it will only be as good as the members make it.

A most important manner in which you can help the Society and system safety in general is to talk about safety to the non-safety types in your organization. Recently I sat next to a man on an airliner who was in charge of one phase of a company product – a product that was designed, manufactured, and partially maintained by his company. There were eight other men on the same plane who were part of a team that was involved in the setting up of this product for a consumer. Our conversation got around to system safety and this team leader stated that he had never heard of the term and had no idea that his company had such a program in force. I wouldn’t want to embarrass anyone by identifying the organization, but over the past few years we have had National officers from this company! And yet here was a person deeply involved in one of the company’s products who didn’t know of the existence of system safety.

If each of the current members of the System Safety Society did a little more for the Society the answer to the question “What can the Society do for me?“. would become so obvious to potential members that the question might never be raised. What have you done? What have you done lately? 

[Ed. – Current volunteer opportunities are on the society website. Submit your JSS manuscript here.]

Donald M. Layton was the former editor of Hazard Prevention and the 1984 ISSS Educator of the Year. He was a professor at the Naval Post Graduate School. He passed away in 2017 at the age of 94.

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Also by this author:

by Donald M. Layton

[Editor’s note: This editorial originally appeared in Vol 6 Issue 5 of Hazard Prevention (now Journal of System Safety) in June-July 1970. It has been reformatted from the original, but the text is otherwise unchanged.]

A quick perusal of a listing of professional engineering societies is enough to make one wonder if all of this is really necessary. Is a professional society really a necessary adjunct to one’s profession, or are such groups formed just to foster the whims of a small, elite group of people? Without pausing to assess the merits of any of the hundreds of other societies, let us take inventory of what SSS is, what it is doing, and what it may do in an effort to ascertain whether we really need the Systems Safety Society.

The concept of safety in industrial activity has been with us longer than it has been officially recognized. Some safety practices were implicitly recognized long before these practices were tagged with a formal title of safety. Industrial safety seems to have taken the forefront in the attempt to identify and eliminate hazards in production procedures. In general, however, these groups were concerned with the safety of preparation (manufacturing) and not in the safety of the ultimate consumer. But with the advent of forms of built-in consumer safety-under such appellations as product insurance, product assurance and even quality control, efforts began to be expended to eliminate or reduce the potential hazards before the product reached the hands of the consumer.

A System Safety Society charter and pin does not make a professional organization. If we are to achieve recognition as an association of the highest standards, we must work hard at it.

Many people in the safety field recognized at this time that there existed a need for an interchange of information in regard to methods and procedures, not only to improve the product, but also to lessen the load on those who were charged with safety and safety improvements.

In the late 1950’s, the concept of safety of the system vice safety of the bits and pieces began to be recognized, not only at the safety level, but even at higher levels of management. As the years progressed, the manufacturers found that specific safety efforts were no longer on a ‘nice to have’ basis, but now began to be included in work statements via the route of the Mil Spec and later, the Mil Std. At long last, there came to be a realization among other than the safety types that a concentrated safety effort across the board was not only a worthwhile task, but also that it might be funded by other than overhead.

The possibility of including System Safety as a discipline to stand alongside Reliability, Maintainability brought not only recognition to the safety engineer, but it also enlarged the scope and depth of his endeavors. It was about this time that a group of these dedicated safety engineers felt that the time was propitious to establish a formal association of those who were working in this field.

The mere establishment of such a society, however, is not an indication of its merits, but the post-formation activities of the System Safety Society have already demonstrated that this is going to be much more than a membership club. Interest in the promotion of the basic aims of the society has resulted in the chartering of local Chapters, all of which have active programs. This, in itself, is almost the ultimate in accomplishment for a national association, since the real strength of the SSS, or any other professional group, lies not in a strong upper hierarchy (although that is of prime necessity) but in activities on the personal level.

All of the functions cannot be focussed at the Chapter level, for by so doing, the activities will overlook and slight a great many of those who need to be reached. One danger that is always present even with an optimum local/national mix of activities is that the program and projects tend to become incestuous in nature. Although there exists a need to ‘spread the word’ among safety engineers, there is perhaps as great a requirement to indoctrinate those in other disciplines as to the necessities, peculiarities and advantages of a strong system safety engineering program.

An excellent example of the latter activity may be found in the participation of the System Safety Society in the annual Reliability and Maintainability Conference. (See Safety Has Its Day, this issue). Even before the establishment of SSS, there was a concentrated safety flavor to the meetings of this conference. Individuals (many of whom were among the founders of the Society) organized sessions and presented papers as early as 1965. This forum not only permitted those of like interests to talk among themselves, but also offered the opportunity for those of the related disciplines to gain a little insight as to what was going on in safety.

Now as to the future. Two great needs must be fulfilled if we are to improve the stature of the SSS to that of a truly ‘professional’ professional society. First, as a continuation and improvement of the effort that has already been seen at the R & M Conference, a concerted program to include safety-oriented papers in national meetings must be established and maintained. A quick look at but one segment, the AIAA, shows a minimum of seven meetings in the next year that could fit one or more safety papers into their general theme.

The second need is possibly even more urgent if we are to speak as the voice of System Safety. The origin of this association was in the aerospace field for it was here that the concepts leading to the Mil Spec were founded. But in our early growth there has been some evidence of the neglect of some of the other aspects of the safety community. This neglect is probably more due to external circumstances than to any internal workings, but now is the time to invite, persuade and even cajol such activities as nuclear, highway, rail, consumer product and industrial safety to join with us in furthering the cause. Of course, there are those in SSS who are representative of these fields, but we have only begun to tap this vital resource. There is an ancient axiom that states that we must profit from the mistakes of others since we do not have time to make all of the mistakes ourselves. It should be obvious that there have been lessons learned in other fields that may have direct or indirect application to some of the problems that we are facing.

How can we achieve this broadening of the base of the System Safety Society? One way is for local Chapter programs to include those from allied safety fields either as speakers or just as guests. Equally opportune is the offering of our services to talk about our problems (and solutions).

If you know of some group, such as traffic safety for example, that has some form of get-together, why not offer yourself for a visit to their meeting? The number of these groups and individuals in these fields (many who have never joined any society because no one ever asked them) is legion. Did you know that there is a society with a safety section that is called Women’s National Aeronautical Association of the United States, Inc.? They are a great bunch, but I wouldn’t want my sister to marry one of them.

A System Safety Society charter and pin does not make a professional organization. If we are to achieve recognition as an association of the highest standards, we must work hard at it.

[Editor Note: Donald M. Layton was the former editor of Hazard Prevention and the 1984 ISSS Educator of the Year. He was a professor at the Naval Post Graduate School. He passed away in 2017 at the age of 94. Read his professional biography.]

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[Editor Note: This essay was originally published in Volume 32 Issue 4 of Hazard Prevention (now Journal of System Safety) in 4Q 1996. The article has been reformatted, but the text is unchanged.]

FOR MANY YEARS, there were diverse analytic techniques utilized to determine and improve safety during the design, development, and testing of products, processes, and systems. However, actual utilization of the techniques was somewhat fragmentary, sometimes superficial, generally haphazard in nature, and was often overlooked or ignored. The growth of reliability engineering emphasized a more rigorous quantitative evaluation of the components of a system. Design for maintainability concepts focused attention on how the system life and functions is dependent upon the character of its interaction with people during actual use. It was well known for the prior hundred years that it was better to rely upon design engineering to eliminate hazards during early concept and development stages than to rely upon subsequently applied procedures and safeguards or, as a last resort, warnings and safety instructions to the user. Thus, the general concepts and techniques were available but poorly utilized and without priority of objectives. This suddenly changed with the growth of more complex systems (such as missile and space systems requiring greater assurance of a high level of safety) and the subsequent discovery that even small simple products could involve important system concepts.

About 36 years ago, I became directly involved in the effort to formalize and organize a more concerted effort toward achieving higher levels of design safety by use of various design-oriented techniques, concepts, practices, and objectives. Key individuals in cooperation with the United States Air Force, created various “system safety programs” that were outlined in descriptive documents and their procurement specification efforts provided money for specialized groups to perform a separate identifiable function labeled system safety engineering. This evolved into a detailed military specification now known as MIL-STD-882 C (1) . The System Safety Society was then born as the need for collaboration and exchange of information in this specialty was recognized. The subject become a matter of university coursework, textbooks, and part of the practice of mechanical and chemical engineering in various nations around the World. International standards were promulgated, in various languages, such as IEC 812 FMEA (Failure Modes and Effects Analysis) and IEC 1025 FTA (Fault Tree Analysis)(2). System safety concepts have been incorporated into process safety standards, machine design standards, quality assurance standards, and proposed environmental standards(3).

Concepts such as cradle-to-grave (concept design through ultimate disposal and recycling), which were a difficult responsibility for many design engineers to accept 30 or 40 years ago, now abound in various voluntary trade standards, government directives, and product specifications. Some specialists have proclaimed that “the genie is out of the bottle and everyone is now doing systems safety”. This, of course, is exaggerated. The system safety specialist has unique knowledge and skills that many not be available elsewhere. System Safety is not just a matter of the “application” of highly specialized knowledge, since the discipline has gradually grown toward “professional practice” where some independent discretion can be utilized (particularly for a cost-benefit result). In some situations, risk estimates may be made at the one-in-a-million level of apparent numerical precision (probability) and, more often, it is at a 4, 5, or 6 category level of risk classification (much more easily accomplished during transient design processes). The analysis may be computer oriented, with elaborate printouts (as a result or a proof of activity), but is more often focused on immediate and visible product improvement and to forestall probable (likely) system defects. In fact, it has matured to include both assurance (prevention) and improvement (corrective action) during the service life of the “system” as actually utilized.

System design now must be world-oriented and culture friendly.

The remarkable growth of “borderless” world trade has created new challenges for system safety There are world trade groups (such as the European Union), domestic standards are yielding to world standards, there are increasing regulatory criteria (except for the United States), and design efforts are often computer linked to separate groups in many locations and frequently oriented toward larger markets (world automobiles, fabrication plants in multiple countries, and reduction of trade barriers between countries). Thus system design now must be world-oriented and culture friendly.

There is also the very important challenge of incorporating the more user friendly” concepts and applying “human factors” knowledge to prevent human error, mistakes, and resultant system failure. In many respects, system safety practitioners often have not appropriately utilized nor have they been as precise with human data and information as they have been with equipment data and information. One might be considered “soft and imprecise” while the other deals with “hard physical facts”, yet both utilize simplifying assumptions, and, approximations or extrapolations may be made for both. However, equipment-human interactions are becoming more important as more advanced litigation concepts and machine design standards are more evenly applied around the World. There are other standards which, depending on the way they are implemented, could benefit from greater consideration of human factors when system design analysis and evaluation is being performed. The opportunities abound, but exactly who will do the system safety engineering in the years ahead?

Footnote: George A. Peters is Past President of the System Safety Society.

REFERENCES

1. System Safety Program Requirements, MIL-STD-882C, January 1933.

2. Mundell, A.B. Sources of Statistical Standards, Quality Engineering, Vol. 8, No. 1, N.Y: Marcel1 Dekker, September 1996.

3. The ANSI/ASQC Q90-1987 series are identical to the International Standards Organization Standards ISO 9000 to 9004 pertaining to design, development, production, installation, servicing, final inspection, and testing. In Great Britain, the BS 5750 became the IS0 9001 to 9003 series. The IS0 9000 series has also be designated as the EN 29000 series (actually 29001, 29002,29003, and 45012). The machinery safety standards include 89/392/EEC. The IS0 14000 series on environmental management systems are still being coordinated. For details see: Peach, R.W. The IS0 9000 Handbook, 2d Ed. Irwin Professional Publishing, 11150 Main Street, Fairfax, Virginia 22030-5066 (Contains the text of the ANSVASQC 49000 series, plus background, documentation, assessment, and accreditation). Note: the MIL-Q-9858A and MIL-I-45208A standards were to be replaced with the ISO 9000 to 9004 quality system standards. Also note: There are now 7,000 companies in the USA who have attained third party IS0 9000 registration, other companies are prepared to provide declarations of conformity to the IS0 9000 series, and others are issuing derivative specifications for their suppliers.

The proceeding is from Journal of System Safety, Spring / Summer 2014 (Vol 50 No 2) by ISSS Historian Rex B. Gordon. The full JSS Archives are being processed and uploaded.

Historical Note No. 1: The Founding of the Society

The event recognized as the founding of the Society occurred on December 4, 1963 in the main lecture hall at the School of Aviation Safety on the University of Southern California campus in Los Angeles. The gathering consisted of about 40 individuals, including many students and others from the USAF Aerospace Safety Center, some USC faculty members, along with system safety representatives of the numerous aerospace companies located in the area.

They had been invited by current technical lead of the USC Aviation Safety School, C.O. (Chuck) Miller. He presented the current scope and purposes of the USC program, which had been contracted by the Air Force. It was designed for those currently in, or being assigned to, aerospace project safety positions, and was intended to better equip them to manage the implementation of the system safety engineering requirement of recently released MIL-S-38130 (now known as MIL-STD-882), stipulating implementation of system safety programs on Air Force aerospace/ missile programs.

Following Miller’s presentation, Roger Lockwood, a member of the school’s faculty, advised the gathering that he had obtained a state of California charter for a technical, non-profit organization to be known as the “Aerospace System Safety Society.” With himself named as president, he invited any of those present who wished to pay a $2 member fee to become members. Lockwood maintained detailed records of those paying the initial and subsequent dues, thus identifying those 10 who both signed the charter member roll and paid the $2, and can be rightfully recognized as “Charter members of the Society.” Within several months, a total of 30 members had paid their dues, (which had been quickly raised to $5 per year by a vote of the Charter members). These 30 initial members noted here include 10 Charter members, nine past Society presidents and seven past chapter chairmen/ presidents. As will be addressed in subsequent notes, the name of the Society has progressed from the Aerospace System Safety Society (ASSS) to the System Safety Society (SSS) to, currently, the International System Safety Society (ISSS). These name changes offers an illustration of the expanding scope of the practice of system safety — from its aerospace origins in Los Angeles to a multitude of world-wide applications.

On December 7, 2013, in commemoration of the 50th anniversary of the Charter meeting of the Society, the Southern California Chapter presented a plaque to the current director of USC aviation safety programs, to be hung in the school’s lobby. This presentation occurred during a Chapter luncheon held in Los Angeles. This “Declaration of Appreciation” identifies five key individuals who uniquely contributed the necessary elements leading to the Charter meeting of the Society. Subsequent “notes” will expand on the roles of these and other system safety pioneers, along with the necessary elements leading to the formation of the Society.

The honored guests at this 50th commemoration celebration were Founder and initial President Roger Lockwood and fellow Charter Member Rex Gordon. Joining Chapter President Francis McDougall and other Chapter members was Thomas Anthony, aviation safety program director and other USC faculty. The meeting culminated in the presentation of the Certificate of Appreciation by Francis McDougall and Roger Lockwood to USC’s Tom Anthony and Dr. Najm Meshkati.

Presentation of certificate of appreciation commemorating the 50th anniversary
of the Charter Meeting of the Society. From left: Tom Anthony, Roger Lockwood,
Francis McDougall, and Dr. Najm Meshkati

Comments on the accuracy of these notes on the History of the Society should be addressed to Rex Gordon at rexbg@aol.com.