Suman Ghosh Dastidar

From Hazards to Requirements: An End to End Safety Traceability Framework for Systems Engineering

Bio.

Suman Ghosh Dastidar is a Design Safety Expert with 19+ years of experience in safety and risk engineering for complex, safety-critical and high-consequence systems across the Energy, Oil & Gas, Offshore, and Semiconductor industries. His expertise lies in the systematic integration of safety engineering into systems engineering and product development throughout the lifecycle. His technical focus includes hazard analysis, risk assessment, safety requirements engineering, functional and technical safety, safety architecture, Human Factors Engineering, machinery safety, Fall Protection by Design, occupational safety, Product Safety, regulatory compliance, and verification and validation. He specialises in establishing bidirectional traceability from hazards and risk controls through safety requirements, design measures, verification methods, and objective compliance evidence through various project experiences. He is a TÜV Nord Certified Machinery Safety Expert and Qualified Person in Fall Protection, and contributes as a subject-matter expert to ISO TC 199 Working Group 11. His engineering work involves the application and interpretation of international standards and industry requirements including and not limited to ISO, EN, NORSOK, NOPSEMA, UK HSE, ANSI Z359, and SEMI S2/S8/S10. His experience encompasses complex offshore and onshore systems, FPSOs, MODUs, LNG facilities, and semiconductor lithography equipment, where he has performed and led activities including hazard identification, risk reduction, HFE analysis, fall-hazard assessment, safety studies, design reviews, PSSR, and regulatory conformity assessment. In his current role at ASML, he works at the interface of systems engineering, product design, safety, human factors, and regulatory compliance, with a particular focus on translating safety intent into engineering requirements and verifiable design solutions.

Abstract.

As engineered systems become increasingly complex, ensuring that safety objectives are consistently translated into design, implementation, and verification activities remains a significant challenge. Although hazard identification and risk assessment are well established engineering practices, the resulting safety information is often fragmented across lifecycle phases and engineering disciplines. In many projects, hazards, risk assessments, safety requirements, architectural decisions, verification evidence, and operational feedback are managed in separate aspects with limited traceability between them. This disconnect reduces confidence in safety assurance, obscures the impact of design changes, and weakens lifecycle decision making in safety critical systems. This paper proposes an End-to-End Safety Traceability Framework that integrates safety engineering activities within the Systems Engineering lifecycle. The framework provides a structured method for transforming hazards into measurable safety requirements and maintaining bidirectional traceability across hazard identification, risk assessment, requirements allocation, system architecture, design implementation, verification, validation, and operational feedback. Unlike conventional hazard logs or standalone safety analyses, the proposed approach establishes an explicit lifecycle thread linking hazards to safety requirements, design controls, verification evidence, and residual risk closure. By treating safety as an inherent system property rather than a late stage compliance activity, the framework supports more robust engineering decisions and strengthens lifecycle safety assurance. The paper presents the conceptual framework, associated traceability artefacts, governance principles, and practical implementation steps required to integrate hazard management with requirements engineering and lifecycle management. An industrial case study from a complex engineering environment is used to demonstrate how a critical hazard can be traced from initial identification through risk assessment, requirement allocation, design implementation, verification, and final validation. The case illustrates how the framework can improve consistency, support change impact analysis, and provide more transparent and evidence-based safety assurance. The proposed methodology is intended to complement existing Systems Engineering and functional safety practices by offering a practical mechanism for connecting hazard analysis to requirements, architecture, verification, and operational learning. The contribution aims to support organizations seeking to strengthen design safety, improve traceability, and enhance safety assurance across complex systems, while also fostering more effective collaboration between systems engineers and safety engineers.