Risk Assessment, 2nd Edition

11Prevention Through Design (PtD) and Design Safety Reviews

Bruce Lyon¹ and Georgi Popov²

¹ Brown & Brown

² University of Central Missouri

OBJECTIVES

• Introduce the concept of PtD and Design Safety Reviews
• Compare the PtD and Risk Assessment Process models
• Review Challenges and Obstacles
• Provide Guidance on Conducting Design Safety Reviews

11.1 Introduction

Arguably the greatest missed opportunity for organizations to reduce risk is the failure to adequately identify, assess, and control risks during the design and redesign phase. At first glance, a safety design review seems like a fairly easy enough process that would be universally practiced within organizations and engineering circles. In reality, there are obstacles that must be overcome to be successful in putting this concept into practice.

For occupational serious injuries and fatalities (SIFs) to be effectively and consistently reduced, safety must be designed into workplace facilities, systems, and methods. Risk avoidance and elimination, the most effective risk treatment options, are generally only possible by design and redesign efforts (Lyon et al. 2019).

The use of risk assessment techniques in the design and redesign phase is one of the most effective ways to avoid and eliminate risk from being introduced into a system or product. While its use has increased during the past decade, design‐phase risk assessments remain one of the most underutilized aspects of operational risk management. This represents ...