Mike Mln said:

how does everyone else manage when they come across the edge case that would make applying the standard less effective

You apply for a derogation. Or, in human speak, you present evidence that what you are doing achieves the same effect that the standard was trying to achieve, and - importantly - achieves the same level of risk.

Remember standards aren't laws, they're standards. You don't have to comply with them. But if you don't, and there's an accident, you have to have a good argument as to why you didn't. Like most of the Highway Code - you don't have to comply to it, but if you don't and then you have an accident the fact that you didn't could be seen as negligent.

I can imagine that your problem might be, who do you get to sign off that your alternative (your derogation) is ok. If there is someone competent (end client, licensing authority etc), and particularly if they required you to work to that standard in their contract, then its a process of presenting them the argument and them accepting it, that's pretty usual.

But otherwise it's much tougher, you have to take the risk of making the decision yourself, and getting your evidence ready in case you ever get challenged - which will probably be after an accident, and the challenge will happen in court. Which won't be nice.

Also, remember that your legal responsibility is to reduce the risk "as low as is reasonably practicable". So for example you might need to show that it's not reasonable to accept the number of nuisance shut offs - that the cost of that is disproportionate to the benefit. If the emergency shut off is positioned there in the standard to prevent the risk of someone dying (i.e. the benefit is that you save a life in the lifetime of the system) then that might be hard to prove.

I don't suppose that's completely helped, because  it depends so much what sort of contract you're working on, but hopefully it's made it a bit clearer.

Really good question.

Thanks,

Andy

Hi Andy,

This is really helpful.

As I have never really had to depart from the standards, learning about derogation and how it can be utilised for the job, is quite useful to know.

Hopefully I can get everything together and come up with a suitable Risk Assesment, it might come to nothing in the end, but I have got new knowledge I can use where needed.

Thanks

Mike

Hi Andy,

This is really helpful.

As I have never really had to depart from the standards, learning about derogation and how it can be utilised for the job, is quite useful to know.

Hopefully I can get everything together and come up with a suitable Risk Assesment, it might come to nothing in the end, but I have got new knowledge I can use where needed.

Thanks

Mike