Title: The Safety Case as a Process Driver

Author(s): Chris Hobbs

Publication Event: Publication of Proceedings of the Thirty second Safety-Critical Systems Symposium

Publication Date: 2024-02-12

Resource URL: https://scsc.uk/r1912.pdf

Abstract:

Teaching novice pilots to fly is inherently dangerous as these students necessarily taxi, fly and fuel aircraft by themselves. This paper describes how a particular Canadian flight school integrated a Safety Assurance Case into its operations to justify the claim that the school’s processes were adequately safe. Incident reports were then used as “defeaters” of the Safety Case argument and the Safety Case was used to generate a significant part of the school’s Safety Management System (SMS). Treating incident reports as “defeaters” to challenge claims and evidence in the Safety Case was particularly useful: considera-tion of each defeater gave rise to corrective actions and, by this means, the Safety Case was continually updated as processes changed. This ensured that the flight school’s procedures could be kept up-to-date and relevant.