Project Safety Case Development and Independent Verification Intensive Course

Course Introduction

Project Safety Case Development and Independent Verification Intensive Course provides advanced professional training in developing structured safety arguments, assembling supporting evidence, demonstrating risk control effectiveness, and independently verifying that projects can be designed, constructed, commissioned, operated, and handed over within defined safety requirements. Projects involving infrastructure, energy, industrial facilities, transportation, engineering systems, construction, utilities, and other safety-critical environments require more than compliance checklists and conventional hazard registers. They need a coherent, evidence-based demonstration that significant hazards have been identified, risks have been evaluated, appropriate controls have been implemented, and the resulting safety position is justified. This course equips participants with the methods and governance practices required to develop credible safety cases throughout the project lifecycle.

A safety case connects safety objectives, hazard identification, risk assessment, control measures, engineering decisions, operational procedures, and verification evidence into a structured argument that a project is acceptably safe for its intended purpose. Participants examine the relationship between safety requirements, system boundaries, design assumptions, hazard scenarios, risk acceptance criteria, and evidence of control effectiveness. They learn to distinguish safety case development from routine risk assessment, compliance documentation, safety management plans, and independent assurance activities. Particular emphasis is placed on establishing traceability between hazards, safety claims, supporting arguments, evidence sources, and the responsibilities of those accountable for safety decisions.

Developing a defensible safety case requires multidisciplinary collaboration across engineering, project management, operations, construction, maintenance, human factors, environmental management, quality assurance, and regulatory compliance. Safety claims must be supported by reliable evidence from design calculations, technical specifications, hazard studies, engineering analyses, inspection records, testing results, commissioning activities, operational procedures, and competent professional judgment. The course explores methods for structuring safety arguments, identifying evidence gaps, challenging unsupported assumptions, assessing uncertainty, and demonstrating that critical controls remain effective under credible failure conditions. Participants also learn how to manage design changes, contractor interfaces, deviations, and emerging hazards that may invalidate previously accepted safety arguments.

Independent verification is essential where project complexity, hazard severity, organizational governance, contractual arrangements, or applicable regulatory frameworks require assurance separate from the team responsible for developing the design or implementing the work. Participants examine the purpose and boundaries of independent verification, the distinction between verification and validation, and the relationship between technical assurance, regulatory review, certification, and formal acceptance. They learn how to define verification scope, establish competence and independence requirements, develop evidence review plans, conduct technical challenge sessions, document findings, classify deficiencies, and confirm closure of corrective actions. The course emphasizes that independence must be substantive and demonstrable, supported by appropriate authority, transparent reporting, conflict-of-interest controls, and access to relevant information.

Projects increasingly incorporate complex digital technologies, interconnected control systems, artificial intelligence, automated equipment, advanced materials, digital twins, and data-driven engineering processes. These developments create new safety considerations involving software reliability, cybersecurity interfaces, human-system interaction, configuration management, system integration, and the validity of simulation-based evidence. Participants examine how digital engineering records, model-based safety analysis, system architecture models, test results, and automated monitoring data can support safety case development when their limitations and assumptions are properly understood. The course also considers how climate hazards, extreme weather, supply-chain changes, contractor interfaces, organizational transitions, and lifecycle modifications can affect the continuing validity of a safety case and the evidence needed for independent review.

By completing Project Safety Case Development and Independent Verification Intensive Course, participants will strengthen their ability to develop structured safety arguments, manage supporting evidence, evaluate risk control measures, organize independent technical reviews, and maintain safety case integrity as projects evolve. They will gain practical capabilities in claim-argument-evidence structures, hazard traceability, assurance planning, verification findings management, configuration control, and safety case updates at key project decision gates. The course supports professionals seeking to improve engineering assurance, regulatory readiness, project governance, and confidence in safety-critical decisions while recognizing that formal acceptance remains subject to the applicable jurisdiction, industry standards, project requirements, and authorized decision-making bodies.

Duration

10 days

Who Should Attend

• Project directors and project managers responsible for delivering safety-critical infrastructure, engineering, industrial, energy, transport, and utility projects.

• Safety case authors and technical specialists responsible for preparing structured safety arguments and assembling evidence to demonstrate risk control effectiveness.

• Independent verification engineers and assurance professionals conducting technical reviews of safety claims, design assumptions, safety requirements, and verification evidence.

• Systems engineers responsible for defining system boundaries, functional requirements, interfaces, architecture, and safety-related design decisions.

• Engineering managers overseeing design assurance, technical governance, configuration control, design reviews, and resolution of safety-related technical issues.

• Health and safety professionals involved in hazard identification, risk assessment, safety management systems, and the development of project safety documentation.

• Process safety and industrial risk specialists supporting hazardous facility design, major accident hazard assessment, and demonstration of risk control adequacy.

• Construction and commissioning managers responsible for verifying that installed systems, construction activities, and commissioning results remain consistent with approved safety requirements.

• Quality assurance and quality management professionals responsible for evidence integrity, verification records, nonconformity management, auditability, and corrective-action closure.

• Regulatory compliance and certification professionals supporting safety submissions, technical assessments, licensing interfaces, and formal acceptance processes.

• Asset owners and operators responsible for reviewing safety cases before commissioning, operational handover, major modifications, and changes in operating conditions.

• Human factors specialists evaluating operator workload, task design, interface usability, competence requirements, and the interaction between people and safety-critical systems.

• Digital engineering, software assurance, and cybersecurity professionals addressing software-dependent safety functions, system integration, digital evidence, and configuration risks.

• Internal auditors, project assurance managers, and independent reviewers assessing the adequacy, traceability, completeness, and credibility of safety case documentation.

• Consultants and technical advisers supporting safety case preparation, independent verification planning, design assurance, risk management, and project governance improvement.

Course Objectives

• Develop an advanced understanding of safety case principles, purposes, lifecycle applications, and the relationship between safety arguments, risk assessments, engineering evidence, and formal project decisions.

• Construct clear claim-argument-evidence structures that demonstrate how identified hazards are controlled and why the proposed system or project meets its defined safety objectives.

• Establish traceability between safety requirements, hazard scenarios, risk controls, design decisions, verification activities, test results, and supporting documentation.

• Apply systematic methods for identifying safety case boundaries, assumptions, exclusions, interfaces, dependencies, and conditions that could affect the validity of the overall safety argument.

• Evaluate evidence quality, completeness, relevance, reliability, and independence to identify unsupported claims, contradictory records, uncertainty, and gaps requiring additional verification.

• Design independent verification strategies that define scope, reviewer competence, organizational independence, technical challenge requirements, reporting lines, and acceptance criteria.

• Distinguish verification, validation, independent assurance, regulatory assessment, certification, and operational acceptance while understanding their respective purposes and limitations.

• Integrate hazard analysis, engineering assessment, human factors, functional safety, operational procedures, and risk control evidence into a coherent and auditable safety case.

• Manage safety case changes arising from design modifications, construction deviations, commissioning findings, supplier changes, software updates, and evolving operational conditions.

• Establish verification findings procedures covering deficiency classification, risk significance, corrective-action ownership, closure evidence, residual concerns, and escalation to authorized decision-makers.

• Apply digital engineering and analytical tools to support safety evidence management, requirements traceability, configuration control, model review, and structured safety case assessment.

• Develop practical safety case governance and lifecycle maintenance arrangements that strengthen accountability, independent challenge, regulatory readiness, and continuing confidence in safety-critical project decisions.

Comprehensive Course Outline

Module 1: Foundations of Project Safety Cases and Independent Assurance

• Examine the purpose, structure, and application of safety cases across safety-critical projects, distinguishing safety cases from hazard registers, risk assessments, safety management plans, and compliance reports.

• Analyze the relationship between safety objectives, system boundaries, identified hazards, risk acceptance criteria, control measures, engineering evidence, and formal safety decisions.

• Explore the responsibilities of project owners, designers, safety case authors, contractors, operators, independent verifiers, assurance teams, and relevant regulatory authorities.

• Establish principles of evidence-based safety justification, proportionality, independence, transparency, traceability, and lifecycle accountability within project governance.

Module 2: Safety Requirements, System Definition, and Case Boundaries

• Define the system, facility, project phase, operational context, intended functions, interfaces, and lifecycle boundaries covered by the proposed safety case.

• Translate applicable legal, regulatory, contractual, engineering, and organizational requirements into clear safety objectives and verifiable acceptance criteria.

• Identify assumptions, exclusions, dependencies, external interfaces, environmental conditions, operating limitations, and organizational factors that may influence the validity of the safety argument.

• Develop requirements traceability matrices linking safety objectives to hazards, controls, design specifications, verification activities, evidence sources, and accountable owners.

Module 3: Hazard Identification and Risk Assessment Integration

• Apply systematic hazard identification techniques appropriate to the project, including structured reviews, preliminary hazard analysis, failure mode analysis, and relevant specialist hazard studies.

• Evaluate credible failure scenarios, initiating events, consequences, exposure pathways, existing safeguards, and dependencies between safety-critical controls.

• Integrate qualitative and quantitative risk assessment results into safety case development while documenting uncertainty, assumptions, limitations, and applicable risk criteria.

• Establish traceability from each significant hazard to preventive measures, protective systems, operational controls, evidence of effectiveness, and residual risk decisions.

Module 4: Safety Case Architecture and Claim-Argument-Evidence Design

• Develop a structured safety argument using top-level claims, supporting subclaims, reasoning statements, assumptions, and evidence that collectively justify the safety position.

• Define clear argument boundaries and ensure that claims are specific, logically connected, supported by appropriate evidence, and consistent with the intended system and operating conditions.

• Apply argument mapping, structured review techniques, and evidence referencing to identify logical gaps, circular reasoning, unsupported assertions, and ambiguous safety conclusions.

• Establish safety case templates and document structures that improve consistency, reviewability, change tracking, cross-referencing, and communication among multidisciplinary stakeholders.

Module 5: Engineering Evidence Development and Technical Justification

• Identify and evaluate the technical evidence required to support safety claims, including engineering calculations, design specifications, simulations, inspections, test results, and qualified expert assessments.

• Assess whether design margins, material properties, system performance, equipment reliability, protective functions, and operating constraints adequately address identified hazards.

• Integrate evidence from design reviews, supplier documentation, manufacturing records, construction inspections, factory acceptance tests, and site acceptance testing into the safety argument.

• Evaluate the limitations of analytical models, test conditions, sampling methods, assumptions, and incomplete data when determining whether evidence adequately supports a safety claim.

Module 6: Independent Verification Planning and Governance

• Define the purpose, scope, boundaries, deliverables, and decision interfaces of independent verification based on project hazards, assurance needs, contractual commitments, and applicable requirements.

• Establish competence criteria, reporting independence, conflict-of-interest controls, access to evidence, authority to raise findings, and arrangements for escalating unresolved safety concerns.

• Develop verification plans specifying review stages, hold points, sampling approaches, technical disciplines, evidence requirements, review methods, and completion criteria.

• Distinguish independent verification from design checking, internal quality assurance, validation, regulatory review, certification, and formal authorization to proceed or operate.

Module 7: Independent Technical Review and Evidence Challenge

• Conduct structured reviews of safety claims, supporting arguments, hazard analyses, engineering records, control effectiveness assessments, and assumptions underlying the safety case.

• Apply evidence challenge techniques to test whether documents are current, technically credible, sufficiently independent, traceable to requirements, and representative of the intended operating conditions.

• Identify omissions, contradictions, unresolved hazards, unsupported conclusions, ambiguous responsibilities, and mismatches between design intent and the evidence available.

• Document review observations using clear technical reasoning, source references, risk significance, requested clarifications, and specific requirements for additional evidence or corrective action.

Module 8: Functional Safety, Systems Engineering, and Human Factors

• Examine how safety-related functions, system architecture, failure behavior, redundancy, independence, diagnostics, and protective mechanisms contribute to the overall safety argument.

• Integrate relevant functional safety lifecycle evidence, software assurance records, reliability analyses, interface assessments, and verification results where applicable to the project.

• Evaluate human factors involving task design, operator workload, alarm management, interface usability, staffing, competence, procedures, and foreseeable human error.

• Assess common-cause failures, interface weaknesses, maintenance dependencies, environmental influences, and interactions between technical and organizational safeguards.

Module 9: Construction, Installation, Commissioning, and Handover Evidence

• Establish evidence requirements for confirming that construction and installation activities conform to approved design specifications, safety requirements, and authorized changes.

• Integrate inspection records, material certificates, nonconformity reports, construction verification, equipment testing, commissioning procedures, and functional performance results into the safety case.

• Evaluate commissioning deviations, incomplete tests, temporary operating arrangements, outstanding defects, and restrictions that may affect safety acceptance or readiness for handover.

• Develop handover criteria that specify required safety evidence, unresolved issues, operating procedures, maintenance information, training records, configuration status, and accountable acceptance authorities.

Module 10: Safety Case Configuration and Change Management

• Establish configuration management processes linking safety case documents to approved design baselines, system versions, equipment configurations, software releases, and operational assumptions.

• Assess how engineering changes, design deviations, supplier substitutions, material changes, software updates, and revised operating conditions affect existing safety claims.

• Define change impact assessment procedures that determine whether hazards, risk analyses, verification evidence, safety arguments, or acceptance decisions require revision.

• Maintain controlled revision histories, approval records, evidence links, change justifications, and traceability between the current safety case and superseded configurations.

Module 11: Digital Evidence, Data Integrity, and Model-Based Safety Cases

• Examine how requirements management systems, digital engineering models, document platforms, simulation environments, and structured databases can support safety case traceability.

• Assess the integrity, provenance, version control, validation, and limitations of digital records, automated calculations, simulation outputs, and software-generated evidence.

• Explore model-based safety arguments and digital twins where appropriate, ensuring that model assumptions, boundary conditions, calibration, and representativeness are documented.

• Establish controls for cybersecurity, access management, evidence retention, data confidentiality, and the responsible use of AI-assisted analysis in safety case preparation and review.

Module 12: Verification Findings, Nonconformities, and Closure Management

• Establish a consistent classification system for verification findings based on safety significance, evidence deficiencies, unresolved hazards, requirement nonconformities, and potential consequences.

• Develop finding records that identify the requirement, supporting evidence, observed deficiency, risk implications, required response, responsible owner, and target resolution date.

• Apply root-cause analysis and corrective-action methods to address underlying technical, organizational, procedural, supplier, or governance weaknesses rather than merely correcting documentation.

• Verify closure using objective evidence, independent review where required, updated safety arguments, and documented approval by the appropriate authorized decision-maker.

Module 13: Safety Case Review Gates and Formal Decision Support

• Define safety assurance gates for concept selection, design maturity, procurement, construction completion, commissioning, operational readiness, major modification, and final handover.

• Establish decision criteria that specify required evidence, unresolved issue tolerances, residual risk conditions, review independence, and authority for approval or rejection.

• Prepare decision-ready safety case summaries that communicate significant hazards, control effectiveness, evidence limitations, open findings, assumptions, and conditions requiring continued monitoring.

• Develop procedures for deferring decisions, imposing restrictions, requiring additional verification, or escalating unresolved concerns when the safety argument is incomplete or uncertain.

Module 14: Lifecycle Safety Case Maintenance and Operational Assurance

• Establish processes for reviewing the continuing validity of safety claims as operating experience, maintenance records, inspection findings, incidents, and performance data accumulate.

• Define triggers for safety case review following incidents, near misses, equipment degradation, new hazards, regulatory changes, organizational changes, or altered operating conditions.

• Integrate operational feedback, reliability trends, corrective actions, audit findings, and lessons learned into updates of the safety argument and supporting evidence.

• Establish ownership, review frequency, document control, assurance responsibilities, and change notification procedures to maintain safety case integrity throughout the asset lifecycle.

Module 15: Regulatory Interfaces, Assurance Standards, and Professional Independence

• Examine how applicable legislation, industry standards, regulatory expectations, contractual requirements, and organizational safety policies influence safety case content and verification arrangements.

• Establish interfaces among project teams, independent verifiers, certification bodies, technical authorities, regulators, clients, and operators while maintaining clear accountability for safety decisions.

• Evaluate reviewer independence, competence, impartiality, conflicts of interest, reporting protections, and the organizational conditions needed for effective technical challenge.

• Prepare assurance documentation that clearly distinguishes verified evidence, professional judgment, unresolved uncertainty, formal compliance conclusions, and matters requiring regulatory or authorized review.

Module 16: Integrated Safety Case Development and Independent Verification Simulation

• Develop a safety case for a simulated safety-critical project, defining the system boundaries, safety objectives, hazard scenarios, risk controls, claims, supporting arguments, and required evidence.

• Conduct an independent verification exercise that reviews engineering records, test results, configuration information, hazard assessments, and unresolved findings against predefined acceptance criteria.

• Prepare a verification report that distinguishes substantiated findings from observations, documents evidence limitations, identifies safety-significant deficiencies, and specifies corrective actions and closure requirements.

• Present a final safety case assurance package containing the argument structure, evidence traceability matrix, verification findings register, change control requirements, decision recommendations, and lifecycle maintenance plan.

Training Approach

This course will be delivered by our skilled trainers who have vast knowledge and experience as expert professionals in the fields. The course is taught in English and through a mix of theory, practical activities, group discussion and case studies. Course manuals and additional training materials will be provided to the participants upon completion of the training.

Tailor-Made Course

This course can also be tailor-made to meet organization requirement. For further inquiries, please contact us on: Email: training@upskilldevelopment.com Tel: +254 721 331 808

Training Venue 

The training will be held at our Upskill Training Centre. We also offer training for a group (at a discount of 10% to 50%) at requested location all over the world. The Onsite course fee covers the course tuition, training materials, two break refreshments, buffet lunch, airport transfers, Upskill gift package, and guided tour.

Visa application, travel expenses, dinners, accommodation, insurance, and other personal expenses are catered by the participant

Certification

Participants will be issued with Upskill certificate upon completion of this course.

Airport Pickup and Accommodation

Airport pickup and accommodation is arranged upon request. For booking contact our Training Coordinator through Email: training@upskilldevelopment.com, +254 721 331 808

Terms of Payment:

Unless otherwise agreed between the two parties’ payment of the course fee should be done 3 working days before commencement of the training so as to enable us to prepare better.