Arbutus Technical Consulting
Experience
Our principal consultant, Bruce Elliott, has direct personal experience in all the areas in which we provide services and we work with trusted partners where a job requires additional skills.
Key elements of Bruce's experience are as follows.
Benchmarking and consultancy
- As head of technology in systems engineering at a major rail consultancy, led an initiative to analyse the principles of systems engineering, achieve consensus on an appropriate tailoring of these principles to rail engineering and embed these within the company's business management system.[1]
- Advised a multi-million pound project within a major rail manufacturing company on improving configuration management arrangements and assisted them to implement the recommendations.
- Benchmarked the practices used by an air traffic services organisation to manage common cause failures and recommended improvements.
- Carried out a study of software reliability modelling for an air traffic services organisation, which demonstrated that useful results could be obtained by applying modern techniques and tools to historical reliability data for operational computer systems.
Process definition
- Editor since 1997 of the 'Yellow Book', the UK railway's handbook on engineering safety management. With support from working groups drawn from across the UK railway industry, prepared three major issues of the handbook and several supplementary pamphlets.[2]
- Captured agreed systems engineering processes for a major rail consultancy (see above) in a company systems engineering manual
- Led team producing engineering safety management system for a national air traffic services provider
- Prepared guidance on the control of risk arising from software-based systems in ships
Training
- Prepared a suite of four training courses for the 'Yellow Book' (see above) and delivered them to more than 500 students
- Prepared systems engineering training for a major rail consultancy (see above) and delivered this training to more than 200 students
- Prepared and delivered training in engineering safety management for air traffic services in the UK, continental Europe and Canada
Trailblazing
- Established systems safety engineering processes and led the system safety engineering team for a $1bn project to modernise the air traffic services infrastructure across Canada
- Established and operated processes for technical review and hazard closure on a multi-million pound project to introduce a computer-based signalling interlocking to the UK
[1] - The approach taken was described in a published paper.
[2] - There is an introduction to the Yellow Book in this published paper. To read the Yellow Book click here.