ENGINEER’S

RESPONSIBILITY FOR
SAFETY AND RIGHTS
UNIT V ENGINEER’S RESPONSIBILITY
FOR SAFETY AND RIGHTS
Safety and Risk – Assessment of Safety and Risk – Risk Benefit Analysis
– Reducing Risk – The government Regulator’s Approach to Risk -
Chernobyl Case Studies and Bhopal Collegiality and Loyalty – Respect
for Authority – Collective Bargaining – Confidentiality – Conflicts of
Interest – Occupational Crime – Professional Rights – Employee Rights –
Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) – Discrimination.
SAFETY AND RISK
• One of the main duties of an engineer is to ensure the safety of the
people who will be affected by the products that he designs.
• The code of ethics of the professional engineering societies make it
clear that safety is of paramount importance to the engineer.
• The engineering codes of ethics show that engineers have a
responsibility to society to produce products that are safe.
• Nothing can be 100% safe, but engineers are required to make
products as safe as reasonably possible.
• Thus safety should be an integral part of any engineering design.
• What may be safe for one person may not be safe for another person.
Ex 1: A Power Saw in the hands of a child is unsafe, but it is safe in
hand of adult.
Ex 2:A sick adult is more prone to ill effects from air pollution than a
healthy adult.
• What is safe to Entrepreneurs, may not be so to Engineers. e.g.,
Pilots: "Indian Airports are not safe; Low Vision in Fog“
• What is safe to Engineers, may not be so to Public.
• Typically several groups of people are involved in safety matters but
have their own interests at stake. Each group may differ in what is safe
and what is not.
 Concept of Safety
• “A ship in harbor is safe, but that is not what ships are built for”
• ‘A thing is safe if its risks are judged to be acceptable’
• Definition for Safety
– “A thing is safe (to a certain degree) with respect to a given person or group
at a given time if, were they fully aware of its risks and expressing their most
settled values, they would judge those risks to be acceptable (to that certain
degree).
– Safety: Safe operation of system and the prevention of natural or human
caused disaster.
Ex 1 : We judge fluoride in water can kill lots of people -> Overestimating risk.
Ex2: We hire a taxi, without thinking about its safety -> Not estimating risk
• A thing is NOT SAFE if it exposes us to unacceptable danger or hazard
Concept of Risk
• Risk in technology could include dangers of
– bodily harm,
– economic loss, or
– environmental degradation.
– a situation involving exposure to danger
• Absolute safety is not possible .Any improvement in making a product safe involves
an increase in the cost of production.
• It is very important for the manufacturer and the user to have some understanding to
know about the risk connected with any product and know how much it will cost to
reduce those risk.
• RISK is the potential that something unwanted and harmful may occur. We take a risk
when we undertake something or use a product that is not safe.
Types of Risk
• Acceptable Risk
• Voluntary risk and Control
• JOB RELATED RISKS
Acceptable Risk
• Acceptable risk refers to the level of human and property injury or loss from
an industrial process that is considered to be tolerable by an individual,
household, group, organization, community, region, state, or nation in view of
the social, political, and economic cost-benefit analysis.
• Example: For instance, the risk of flooding can be accepted once every 500
years but it is not unacceptable in every ten years.
• It is management's responsibility to set their company's level of risk. As a
security professional, it is your responsibility to work with management and
help them understand what it means to define an acceptable level of risk.
• Each company has its own acceptable risk level, which is derived from its
legal and regulatory compliance responsibilities.
Voluntary risk
• A person is said to take ‘VOLUNTARY RISK’
- when he is subjected to risk by either his own actions or action taken by others
- volunteers to take that risk without any apprehension.
• Ex: over rough ground for amusement
• Voluntary risks have to do with lifestyle choices. They are the risks that people
take knowing that they may have consequences. These risks include smoking
tobacco, driving a car, skydiving, and climbing a ladder.
• Involuntary risks are risks that people take either not knowing that they are at
risk, or they are unable to control the fact that they are at risk, such as
secondhand smoke. These risks often include environmental hazards such as
lightning, tsunamis, and tornadoes. 
JOB RELATED RISKS
• Many workers are taking risks in their jobs in their stride like being exposed to
asbestos.
• Exposure to risks on a job is in one sense of voluntary nature since one can always
refuse to submit to the work or may have control over how the job is done.
• But generally workers have no choice other than what they are told to do since
they want to stick to the only job available to them.
• But they are not generally informed about the exposure to toxic substances and
other dangers which are not readily seen, smelt, heard or otherwise sensed.
• Occupational health and safety regulations and unions can have a better say in
correcting these situations but still things are far below expected safety standards.
ASSESSMENT OF SAFETY AND RISK
• Absolute safety is never possible to attain and safety can be improved
in an engineering product only with an increase in cost.
• A product involves primary cost (Production) and secondary cost,
both are taken into consideration in calculating the total cost. The
secondary costs are warranty expenses, loss of customer goodwill and
loss of even customers and so on
• It is very important for the manufacturer and the users to have some
understanding to know about the risks connected with any product
and know how much it will cost to reduce those risks
• It should now be clear that ‘safety comes with a price’ only.
• P - Primary cost of products, including cost of safety measures
involved.
• S - Secondary costs including warranty, loss of customer goodwill
• T - Total cost+P+S
• Minimum total cost occurs at M.
• H - Highest acceptable risk may fall below risk at least cost M.
• H - H and its higher costs must be selected as design or operating
cost.
• Fig indicates how high safety and low
risks lead to high primary cost and
low secondary cost.
• The other extreme is low safety and
high risks.
• One saves on primary cost but pays
more because of high secondary
costs.
• In between where the slopes of the
primary and secondary costs, curves
are equal in magnitude but opposite
in direction, is the point of minimum
total cost (M).
• If all costs can be quantified, that
optimum point will be the goal.
• For an optimal design, we must be
clear about how to determine the
risk and how to compare losses with
benefits.
Uncertainties encountered in design process
• Coordination problems.
• Contractor-caused delays.
•Uncertainties  regarding  materials  and  skills  required  in  the 
manufacturing
• Changing economic realities.
• Unfamiliar environmental conditions like very low temperature
•A  decision  on  maximizing  profit  or  maximizing  the  return  on  investment.
•Uncertainties about applications  like dynamic loading instead  of static loading, 
vibrations, wind speeds.
•The  available  standard  data  on  items  like  steel,  resistors,  insulators,  optical 
glass,  etc  are  based  on  statistical  averages  only.
 • An engineer has to be cautious even with the
standard materials specified for normal use.
• For example, the compressive strength of
concrete is routinely carried out, where as the
strength of steel is often taken for granted.
• To account for uncertainties about materials or
components, as well as incomplete knowledge
about the actual operating conditions of the
projects, engineers have introduced a factor
called ―factor of safety.
• Factor of safety is defined as ultimate stress by
working stress (Safe or allowable stress).
• When actual stress on the member exceeds the
Fig. Thermal conductivity of copper wire
allowable stress it will fail.
under different temperatures studied by
• That is, the product may be said to be safe when
different investigators.
the actual stress less than the allowable stress
Testing strategies for safety
Some commonly used testing methods:
• Using  the  past experience in checking the design and performance
• Prototype testing
Here the one product tested may not 
be representative of the population of products.
• Tests simulated under approximately actual conditions to know the
performance flaws on safety.
• Routine quality assurance tests on production runs.
• The  above  testing  procedures  are  not  always  carried  out 
properly.  Hence  we  cannot  trust  the  testing  procedures  uncritically
• Some tests are also destructive and obviously it is  impossible to do
 destructive testing and improve safety.
• In  such  cases,  a  simulation  that  traces  hypothetical  risky 
outcomes could be applied.
• Scenario Analysis (Event -> Consequences)
• Failure Modes & Effects Analysis (Failure  modes  of  each 
component)
• Fault Tree Analysis (System  Failure  >  Possible  Causes  at 
component level) 
Example of Testing for safety
• Failure modes and effect analysis (FMEA) :
This approach systematically examines failure modes of each component, 
without  however,  focusing  on  relationships  among  the 
elements of a complex system.
• Fault Tree Analysis (FTA) :
A system failure is proposed and then events are traced back to possible 
causes  at  the  component  level.  The  reverse  of  the  fault-tree  analysis 
is  ‘event – tree analysis’.
This  method  most  effectively  illustrates  the  disciplined  approach 
required  to  capture  as  much  as  possible  of  everything  that  affects 
proper  functioning  and  safety  of  a  complex  system.
What is the goal of risk assessment?
• The aim of the risk assessment process is to remove a hazard or
reduce the level of its risk by adding precautions or control measures,
as necessary. By doing so, you have created a safer and healthier
workplace.