Prevention Through Design

Prevention through Design (PtD) is a relatively new term to describe concepts long considered informally by engineers and equipment designers. ANSI B11.0 (2010) Safety of Machinery notes the following:

 

Prevention through Design or PtD is recent term in the industry; the objectives of risk assessment, risk reduction and elimination of hazards as early as possible are integral and not new to this standard. Although, the phrase “Prevention through Design� was not used within the standard, other equivalent terms such as “elimination by design,� “design out,� and “substitution� are used in addition to thoroughly addressing risk assessment and applying it to the lifecycle and operations of the machine.

 

Risk Assessment in the Near Future

Fortune telling is rarely a promising venture. However, some projections can be reasonably postulated based on the current trends. The following projections are only ideas on what lies ahead in the quickly evolving risk assessment effort. Guarantees are neither given nor implied.

Risk Assessment Will Become a Condition of Sale

Customers will increasingly require risk assessment as a condition of sale. Purchasers of machinery, equipment, products and/or components will begin to require that a risk assessment of the system be performed before they will accept the system.

Determining Acceptable Risk

Achieving consensus on what constitutes acceptable risk is difficult, largely because the fundamental concept of acceptable risk is subjective and everyone has an opinion. Acceptable risk is a hard discussion to weather in many instances. Yet every day engineers and safety practitioners, operators and maintenance workers, and senior management make decisions about acceptable risk - often with no specific rule or guidance or method.

Cost Considerations and Risk Assessment

Cost is always a factor in engineering design and also in risk reduction. It is important to evaluate financial constraints early and often in the design process. Resources are always limited. Not every desired or technically possible risk reduction approach can be implemented. Companies only have so many dollars to spend on risk reduction and they need to use those funds wisely to obtain the greatest improvements.

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