What Safeguards Do You Use to Avoid Mistakes

Chloe James answered on 23 Jun 2021:

In my role, we use lots and lots of different checks to make sure we don’t make mistakes.

The first check we would use is called Peer Review. This is simply getting another engineer in the team to check through your work. Similar to if you checked your friend’s work in school. This is a really good way to spot any mistakes as they haven’t seen the work before.

The second checks that we use are all completed through Microsoft Access. We have a variety of tests set up, which runs through all the data we have input, and highlights any problems. The checks look for things like typos, extra spaces, incorrect maintenance and incorrect failure modes. These checks are the most important, as they stop any mistakes being loaded onto the ship.

Caroline Roche answered on 23 Jun 2021:

Similar to Chloe, we do peer reviews on our design documents and drafts of code.

I also have another engineer test my code fully using an approved test specification (this is a document which details exactly how the code should work) and once they’re happy it works, I invite the customer in to repeat the testing.
The customer will redo the testing and can check that how we have implemented the design to how they want it to be as well.

Before we send any code out to the factory, we have a dedicated quality team who will audit how we tested the system and ensure we did it right.

Emma Crook answered on 23 Jun 2021:

the oil & gas industry (and any industry where there is potential to harm personnel or the environment) has strict risk assessments and reviews to ensure the systems we design are safe and suitable for use. there are many different types of risk assessment including design reviews and hazard and operability study (called a HAZOP). there is lots of information online about HAZOPs and how we use them to make sure our designs are safe.

Murat Islam answered on 23 Jun 2021:

On job sites, I do dynamic health and safety, and environmental risk assessments. I report anything out of ordinary to make sure everybody is safe. In engineering design, I get someone else to peer review my work and if needed get my manager to approve it, I may do simulation to verify calculation results, or I may do small experiments to prove what I think would actually work. For bigger jobs, we do physical tests and if needed destroy the test sample, which then tells us the correct capacity and perfomance of a product. If I programmed an excel spreadsheet using VBA macros (codes) I make sure I test it many times for different scenarios and prove that it always gives us acceptable answers, and it doesn’t have a bug in the coding. Double or triple check any data tables and get someone to review it again. I may get an end user to test the prototype, before relasing it to a larger user group. I follow industry standards and design rules whenever required. All these things ensure that we deliver safe products and services, while also working in a safe environment.

Sam Hurst answered on 23 Jun 2021:

Everything must be checked by somebody else in the team and reviewed by a manager.

Tommy Shinton answered on 23 Jun 2021:

Great question – and a really important one!
When we finish a design, before we issue it, it needs to be checked, reviewed and approved by other people. If it’s a really important thing that would be disastrous if it failed, then it needs more checks, sometimes by other teams or even other companies.

Louise Wood answered on 23 Jun 2021:

I work for a very small company and we are all very busy so I don’t have the same luxury as the others with Peer review. Boy would I love Peer review, it would ease some pressure. So what I do is always measure twice. Double sometimes triple check calculations. Use my experience, if it looks wrong, it usually is.

I do some work for the HSE and Lawyers which often requires a technical report. I don’t have anyone with enough time to proof read the reports for me. So once I’ve completed the report, ill leave it for a couple of days and then read the whole document again. The break from the document helps me see the mistakes that I need to alter before submitting. I can find the report is littered with mistakes, things spell checker wouldn’t pick up. That’s another way I avoid mistakes.

Carys Kelly answered on 28 Jun 2021:

Fab question. Similarly to other people, everything I have to do must be checked by someone else. This means that they will be able to catch any mistakes that I could have missed. Another really important thing here is communication. My team have meetings twice a day, they’re only 10-15 mins but very useful. In the meetings we discuss what everyone is doing and if they need any help. This often catches mistakes as sometimes people are working on the wrong thing, or aren’t doing things in the best way.

Mark Eyles answered on 29 Jun 2021:

There are some key things we do typically. Design Failure Mode Effect Analysis (DFMEA) is a key one. Computer analysis, or simulation, also plays a big part in avoiding mistakes; things like Finite Element Analysis, Tolerance Analysis, Computational Fluid Dynamics. Then there are the practical things, Design of Experiments, Materials testing, Shock and Vibration and Environmental testing. This all helps to avoid mistakes finding there way through the design process.

Question: What Safeguards Do You Use to Avoid Mistakes

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