5: Health and Safety

Question 1

In the context of safety, what do Hazard and Risk mean?

Answer 1

Safety: (Exact same as previous definition!)
- hazard: something that has the capacity to cause harm
- risk: the probability of harm from that hazard

Question 2

What are 3 common systematic tools that engineers use to try and identify potential hazards and address associated risks?

Answer 2

Failure Modes and Effects Analysis (FMEA)
Hazard and Operability Analysis (HAZOP)
Fault Tree Analysis (FTA)

Question 3

What is Failure Modes and Effects Analysis (FMEA)?

Answer 3

Failure Modes and Effects Analysis (FMEA):
- considers the way something could cease to work as intended
- These are known as failure modes

• involves quantifying and documenting associated risks based on severity, likelihood, and chance of detecting failure in advance
• commonly used for products, but can be applied to systems and processes

Question 4

What is Hazard and Operability Analysis (HAZOP)?

Answer 4

Hazard and Operability Analysis:
- Used in multidisciplinary teams to examine hazards and risks in processes and the operation of systems
- a bottom-up approach:
- explores how the deviations in
performance of a system can lead to
consequences

Question 5

What is Fault Tree Analysis (FTA)?

Answer 5

Fault Tree Analysis (FTA):
- A visual technique for analyzing failures in a system
- uses a logic diagram to map how a system-level failure could be caused by a combination of failures of system components and/or human error
- a top-down approach:
- starts from potential failure at the
system level and works down to identify
possible causes

Question 6

What is the Risk Hierarchy?

Answer 6

Risk Hierarchy:
- categorizes how effective a control is likely to be in the mitigation of health and safety risks
Control:
- measures that are taken

• Elimination: remove the hazard entirely
• Substitution: replace the hazard with something safer
• Engineering controls: physical protections that prevent people from being exposed to hazards
• Administrative controls: measures such as policies, instructions, training, and alerts
• PPE: personal protective equipment

Engineering controls, administrative controls, and PPE may be used in combination

Question 7

What are standards?

Answer 7

Standards:
- voluntary guidelines for products and activities that have been agreed upon

These are formalized, published agreements
Standards ensure consistency, compatibility, and safety

Question 8

What are codes?

Answer 8

Codes:
- similar to standards, but mandatory once enacted into law

codes may refer to one or more standards
to satisfy a code, all referenced standards must be satisfied

Question 9

What are regulations?

Answer 9

Regulations:
- mandatory rules and requirements that may reference standards and codes to make them mandatory

set up by a government or regulatory body
enforced by law and must be followed