Product safety risk assessment methodologies - a whole of life look at safety

Increasing utilization of third party technical services has fractured traditional safety systems through decentralized or dysfunctional information management and variable approaches to hazard identification and control. The resultant loss of the total product safety view with the added complication of legislative requirements to increase awareness of the safety and ecological impact of product has created the need for a process determining these attributes prior to selection and deployment. We present the whole of life (WOL) program as a development in recognition of operational elements within safety as applied to a complete product life cycle. Furthermore the program offers potential for decentralized, real-time information management and expansion for environmental hazards assessment. The purpose of this paper is to study the potential of WOL material hazards analysis as a cornerstone and precursor to the current accepted practices of incidental safety systems. The major feature of WOL is the promotion of inherent safety within a product, given the analysis of all presently available safety data. WOL, applied prior to product acceptance, is potentially a superior tool to enhance the overview and control of hazards throughout an asset lifecycle.