Professionals Dedicated to the Safety of Systems, Products, and Services
© Organized 1962 Incorporated 1973
The WDC Chapter Training Symposium will be held at the beautiful LaPlata Campus of the College of Southern Maryland in Charles County
Maintaining Safety in COTS/GOTS/NDI Environment
Instructor: Mr. Warren Naylor
Track 3 - System Safety & Software Safety Relationships
Tuesday, 1:00 PM - 4:45 PM
Course Abstract:
The COTS (COTS, GOTS, and NDI) revolution came about as a result of acquisition reform and has continued to gain momentum ever since. The original thesis was that COTS would reduce system development costs and bring products to deployment quicker with less problems. The reality has never fully achieved these benefits; however there have been some successes along the way that has resulted in the sustainment of this effort. These successes were not with sacrifices and valued lessons learned that will be passed along in this class. The main issues of COTS remain, for example, obsolescence, ruggedization, lack of development artifacts like rest reports, source code, architectural structure, interrupt structures and timing, etc. These issues can be managed and a safe system can be built, however the model and methodologies used are different and the system safety engineer as well as the program’s development team will have to think outside the historical verification and development models to ensure the safety of the system is acceptable and can be ultimately certified and maintained throughout the intended life cycle of the system in its intended environment. Additionally, this course will guide the system safety practitioner in dealing with unrealistic program expectations and provide them with enough forethought to adequately bid the system safety program correctly to ensure a safe system is built and maintained.
Topic Learning Objectives:
1. Understanding of COTS/GOTS/NDI issues and concerns
a. Gain knowledge of lessons learned
b. Understand the potential hazards and mitigations of same
c. Understand service history and how it can be effectively used
d. Understand service history and understand when it is not applicable
e. Understand that COTS is not an excuse for building an unsafe system
2. Understanding the COTS life cycle and its impact on the program
a. Understanding obsolescence
b. Understanding obsolescence’s potential impact on your program’s safe operation
c. Understanding COTS maintenance issues and potential mitigations
d. Understand COTS training issues and their potential impact on the safe operations of your system
3. Managing program management expectations
a. Educate that cheaper is usually not better
b. Provide an understanding that reductions in development costs will be absorbed by increased testing
c. Understanding that UL certified does not constitute system safety
d. Understanding that a wrong selection of a COTS or NDI product could bankrupt your program
e. Understanding that a wrong selection of a COTS or NDI product could sacrifice system safety
f. Understanding of why a technology refresh plan is needed and what it should encompass
4. Successfully gaining certification
a. Understanding how to properly disclose of residual risk
b. Understand what residual risk needs to be disclosed and why
c. Understand what needs to be presented and why
d. Understand action items should be considered constructive and dealt with in earnest
e. Understand the implications and consequences of under or over stating risk
f. Understand the ethical implications of deliberate omissions
5. Correctly bidding COTS programs
6. Understand how to successfully get the needed funding for a successful safety program
7. Understand how to conduct your SSP with inadequate funding
Student Requirements:
· Students are required to actively participate in class discussions and group exercises
Instructor Bio:
Mr. Naylor has over ~30+ years of system engineering, software engineering, field support, and system safety engineering experience. Mr. Naylor started his career in system safety engineering in 1993 whilst at BAE Systems where he became the North America Lead System Safety Engineer. In 2004, Mr. Warren Naylor moved to Northrop Grumman Electronic Systems in Baltimore serving as an Advisory Engineer (System Safety). In this capacity, Mr. Naylor is technically responsible for all NGES (Baltimore) System Safety Programs and supports all high priority programs directly. Mr. Naylor is also responsible for all incident and accident investigations/reports and all Safety of Flight evaluations/recommendations. Mr. Naylor also co-founded the NGC System Safety Community of Practice (SS CoP) and is currently co-chairperson.
Mr. Naylor is known for his innovative solutions to the issues facing system safety and has published 12 foundation system safety technical papers on subjects including Commercial off the Shelf, programmatic risk, cost and schedules negative impact on system safety, among others. He has also collaborated in the writing of many Government Papers and Guidance including being a co-author of RTCA D-278. Mr. Naylor is the most recent past President of the Washington, DC Chapter of the International System Safety Society and the most recent past chairperson of the 2007 International System Safety Conference in Baltimore, MD. Mr. Naylor also teaches system safety, system safety ethics, and software safety engineering classes to other industry safety engineers.
