SDF Safety Case Forum (SCF)

About the Safety Case Forum

The Safety case Forum is a sub-group of the Safety Directors' Forum.

The objectives of the Forum are to:

  • Improve the standardisation of approach to, fit for purpose safety cases, delivered to time, quality and cost, at all stages of a facility’s life cycle, allowing for the safe and efficient operation of nuclear facilities.
  • Develop and disseminate industry good practice to facilitate cost effective delivery of periodic safety reviews, including due consideration of interim reviews and continuous monitoring.
  • Facilitate benchmarking between Nuclear Operators, Licensees, Authorisees and appropriate groupings of these organisations; to standardise as far as possible, the analysis, and improve the quality of the safety case and any periodic review, while developing the simplicity of their presentation.

The Objectives will be achieved by:

  • Sharing lessons learnt (successes and failures) on safety case production and the quality of continual, interim or periodic reviews and the dissemination of lessons learnt into the member organisations and more widely across the industry.
  • Identifying, developing, sharing and promulgating good practice on methods for the production and implementation of modern standards safety cases and periodic reviews of safety.
  • Securing regulatory input and feedback, to help enhance process improvements.
  • Exploring and defining common systems and processes for safety case authors and other production specialists.
  • Securing a tangible and agreed knowledge base in safety case methodologies.
  • Provide cross-organisational support in capability and resource development.

The outputs from the Safety Case Forum and any of its associated work streams are provided in good faith, as industry good practice, and as such are advisory and not mandatory, to ensure the integrity of the Intelligent Customer status within individual companies.  It is nevertheless an aspiration that all companies associated with the Safety Case Forum will, over time, adopt the processes and methodologies, proportionately, within their organisations.

The Safety Case Forum shall produce outputs which include, but are not limited to:

  • Improvement opportunities; the circulation of lessons learned from both successes and failures (in the form of technical guidance notes and technical briefing notes) that can assist in raising the standard and quality of the safety cases and periodic reviews that are being produced.
  • Strategies, recommendations and specific deliverables against identified and agreed Problem Statements

A significant advantage can be realised from the sharing, discussion, analysis and assessment of common problems.  The aim is to produce an outcome that promotes a common approach which can be adopted across the industry and which avoids the recognised pitfalls, prevents rework, overlap and duplication.

The production of any guidance shall recognise the wide range of environments, complex infrastructure and concurrent hazards that are present in the full range of operations and capabilities across the nuclear industry in the United Kingdom, which includes manufacturing, power generation, defence, processing and waste management activities.

The Forum has invited representatives from all UK Licensees and Authorisees to participate.  Within the Forum a unique opportunity exists to realise this potential advantage and distribute, disseminate and share that information through all the member organisations and across the wider UK nuclear industry.

During 2019, a decision was taken to bring the Peer Review Forum under the management of the Safety Case Forum.  This was considered appropriate to capture and enhance the potential synergies of the two groups, to get them working together in a more integrated way and to provide an independent commentary into the SCF work on capturing good practice and proposing revisions to safety methods and processes.  While the amalgamation of work is only just starting to take effect, the groups are positive in their outlook and fully expect a good working relationship to develop that will enhance the outputs from the Work Streams.

Benefits of the Safety Case Forum

Although very difficult to quantify, a tangible value and benefit has been gained by members of the Safety Case Forum over the years, through the ability to network and exchange information on technical queries, such as:

  • Radiological/chemotoxic assessment methodology.
  • Derivation of SILs.
  • Flood-guards.
  • External hazards methodology.
  • HAZOP software.
  • Seismic criteria.
  • Mortality risk factors.
  • Design Basis Analysis.
  • Categorisation of safety cases.
  • Administrative safeguards.

Substantial work has taken place on potentially significant changes to the approach to the Periodic Review of Safety.  The emphasis has changed away from a 10-yearly event, to a more continual monitoring, data capture, normal day-to-day business approach, with regular interim reviews, continual assessments and timely implemented improvements with robust justification of risk reduction and compliant operation.  These activities would tend to  refocus the dedicated Periodic Review of Safety activity to be exactly what it was always intended to be; a review of trends and issues emerging over the past 10 years, a searching review of processes against good practice and a consideration of what is needed to maintain safe operation over the coming 10 years.

Should this revised approach be adopted across the industry there is the potential to fundamentally change the way in which the Periodic Review of Safety is implemented with an accompanying step-change in real-time safety monitoring and understanding, with the attendant benefits that this would bring.

The Safety Case Forum is endeavouring to create and nurture interactions with other sub-groups of the Safety Directors’ Forum, these include:

  • Nuclear Engineering Design Forum.
  • Culture sub-group.
  • Organisational Capability sub-group.
  • Human Performance Forum.
  • Operating Experience and Learning sub-group.
  • Criticality sub-group.

Programme of Work

Recent activity

The Safety Case Forum convenes for two-day meetings, three times each year, attended by up to 30 personnel, representing Licensee and Authorisee organisations across the nuclear industry and from all parts of the UK.  The Forum carries out a number of activities in relation to the assessment and production of Safety Cases and the Periodic Review of Safety:

  • Representatives have undertaken a number of exchange visits to other sub-groups, notably the Criticality Working Group, the Operating Experience and Learning sub-group, the Nuclear Engineering Design Forum and are currently fostering relationships with the newly formed Culture sub-group.
  • The Safety Case Forum has been actively liaising with the Young Nuclear Safety Professionals’ Forum (YNSPF) and it has compiled and submitted a number of tasking proposals which have been accepted for incorporation into the on-going work programme of the YNSPF.
  • The Safety Case Forum is privileged to be given continued access to ONR representatives when they are carrying reviews or updates to their Technical Inspection Guides (TIGs) and Technical Assessment Guides (TAGs). This allows us to gain an understanding of the thinking behind the content in the documents and allows the opportunity to preview and provide comments where appropriate, with views that can influence the outcomes and methodologies in those documents.
  • The Safety Case Forum, in consultation with Sellafield Ltd and the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority, has established a framework for the development of the Release Fraction and Decontamination Factor Database, currently an NDA Asset, into an industry wide tool. This will provide a number of advantages, including:
    • Moving the information to a reliable, modern platform and supporting infrastructure.
    • Generating a pool of information that is unambiguously related to situations specific to the UK Nuclear Industry.
    • Expanding the number of potential sources of information for any particular category of information, providing additional provenance and a more robust withstand to vicarious challenge.
    • An obvious opportunity to conduct and review industry wide understanding of specific scenarios in different positions within the lifecycle and to carry out appropriate benchmarking.
    • A chance to cross-check and potentially learn from the experience of others, in safety arguments and methodologies, to benchmark across the industry providing a robust defence against regulatory challenge.
    • The use of common data in similar situations, provides an opportunity to check and potentially reduce conservatism, therefore supporting an optimised design and potentially reducing costs.
    • An opportunity to promote consistency in the use of the appropriate arithmetical data in any given situation.

Key achievements

Over the life of the Forum, several guidance documents have been published, these include guides on the following subjects:

  • Right First Time Safety Cases – How to write a usable Safety Case.
  • Conservative Exposure Durations for Unmitigated Worker Doses in Design Basis Analysis.
  • Appropriate Conservatism in Safety Cases.
  • Design Basis Assessment Schemes.
  • The Periodic Review of Leadership and Management for Safety.
  • Ownership and Management of ALARP.
  • Monitoring, Interim Review and Continuous Improvement in Periodic Review of Safety.
  • Keeping Safety Cases Live.
  • Risk & Shortfall Management.

It is considered a key achievement that the Forum attracts regular and proactive ONR representation for each meeting.  Ensuring a conduit between the Safety Case Forum and the Office for Nuclear Regulation, in both directions, for updates, new ideas, pertinent and meaningful discussions and where necessary, action.

The work associated with the Periodic Review of Safety used to have 1 day of the meeting dedicated exclusively to it.  The majority of the PRS work has now been concluded and the two days have been combined again into the Safety Case Forum meeting, with new work streams being established.

The commitment and enthusiasm of representatives from all nuclear Licensees and Authorisees, within the established work streams, is further evidenced by the arrangement of interim meetings and video conferences to progress work outside of the normal planned meeting schedule.

Future Programme

The forward work plan within the Safety Case Forum identifies the progression of current work streams, which include:

  • Work Stream 1 – Managing Safety Cases. A toolbox of methods to identify common pitfalls.
  • Work Stream 2 – Education and Learning from Experience. Dealing with the three fundamental aspects of Competency, Training and Learning from Experience.
  • Work Stream 3 – Engineering Integration. Understand how Engineering and Safety can work more closely and effectively with each other.

In addition, a significant realignment is underway to support the aims and objectives of the Safety Directors Forum.

More Information

Useful Documents

Documents published by the Safety Case Forum, are listed below.  All these documents have recently been reviewed, and updated, they were reissued in March 2020.

Right First Time Safety Cases: How to write a usable safety case, Issue 2 (March 2020)  

Appropriate Conservatism in Safety Cases, Issue 2 (March 2020)      

Conservative Exposure Durations in Design Basis Analysis, Issue 2 (March 2020)  

Design Basis Assessment Schemes, Issue 2 (March 2020)

The Periodic Review of Leadership & Management for Safety, Issue 2 (March 2020)  

Monitoring, Interim Review and Continuous Improvement in Periodic Review of Safety, Issue 1 (March 2020)

Keeping Safety Cases Live, Issue 1 (March 2020)

Ownership and Management of ALARP, Issue 1 (March 2020)

Risk and Shortfalls Management, Issue 1 (June 2020)

Links to other sites

The Safety Directors’ Forum has identified “communities” within which associated subject sub-groups could co-operate.  The Safety Case Forum is part of a wider community identified as GROUP 5 – Assurance, which comprises:

  • Nuclear Safety Capability WG.
  • Safety Case Forum.
  • Peer Review Forum.
  • Internal Regulation WG.
  • Nuclear Emergency Arrangements Forum.

Contact Us

For more information regarding the Safety Case Forum, please contact:

The Safety Case Forum Sponsor;        Dr Paul Rees.          paul.rees@awe.co.uk
The joint-Chairs for the Safety Case Forum: Tony Rice tony.rice@awe.co.uk
  Simon Williams simon.williams@rolls-Royce.com

The general enquiry email address is:                safetycaseforum@awe.co.uk