Reliability, Maintainability and Risk, 8th Edition

Chapter 19. Contract Clauses and Their Pitfalls

19.1. Essential Areas

Since the late 1950s in the USA, reliability and maintainability requirements have appeared in both military and civil engineering contracts. These contracts often carry penalties for failure to meet these objectives. For over thirty years in the UK, suppliers of military and commercial electronic and telecommunication equipment have also found that clauses specifying reliability and maintainability are included in invitations to tender and in the subsequent contracts. For at least ten years the focus on safety-related requirements means that, today, the vast majority of contracts for plant and equipment specify these parameters, for hazardous failure modes. The knock-on effect ...