Arbutus Technical Consulting
Experience
We had direct personal experience in all the areas in which we provided services and we worked with trusted partners where a job required additional skills.
Key elements of our experience are described below. Sentences for which the subject is ‘Bruce’ describe experience gained by our principal consultant, Bruce Elliott, before Arbutus Technical Consulting was founded. Other sentences describe work undertaken by Arbutus Technical Consulting.
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. (See the publications page)
- We advised a multi-million pound project within a major rail manufacturing company on improving configuration management arrangements and assisted them to implement the recommendations.
- We benchmarked the practices used by an air traffic services organisation to manage common cause failures and recommended improvements.
- We assisted a major rail manufacturing company to implement a formal approach to the assessment of its staff's competence in systems engineering, using an assessment framework published by INCOSE.
- We developed a tool for principled, qualitative assessment of the efficiency and effectiveness of systems safety engineering / engineering safety management processes. This assessment tool is offered to the market in conjunction with Altran under the name, ‘ESM Gauge’. ESM Gauge has been used on both metro and mainline projects. For further information about ESM Gauge, please contact us or go to www.altran.co.uk
Process definition
- Between 1997 and 2012, Bruce was editor of the ‘Yellow Book’, the UK railway's handbook on engineering safety management / systems safety engineering. With support from working groups drawn from across the UK railway industry, he prepared three major issues of the handbook and several supplementary pamphlets. (See the publications page)
- We drafted issue 1 of the international Engineering Safety Management Handbook (iESM), under contract to Technical Programme Delivery Limited (TPD), and continue to support its development. iESM is developed on behalf of the international rail community by TPD under the supervision of an international working group, including key players from the rail industries in the UK, China, Australia and France. For further details, see the iESM website - www.intesm.org.
- Bruce captured agreed systems engineering processes for a major rail consultancy (see above) in a company systems engineering manual.
- Bruce led a team that developed an engineering safety management system for a national air traffic services provider.
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
Arbutus Technical Consulting's experience in training provision is described on the training page.
Trailblazing
- Bruce established systems safety engineering processes and led the systems safety engineering team for a $1bn project to modernise the air traffic services infrastructure across Canada.
- Bruce 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.
- We led the systems safety engineering function of a depot upgrade project, during which time we consolidated the hazard log, restructured the safety case and established project hazard review processes.