Asking about Risk in a Company: A New Approach to Learning ISO 45001 in Engineering Programs

[EN], This paper proposes a workflow so that engineering scholars can learn to ask effective questions to establish systems of consultation to workers following the indications of the international standard ISO 45001 “Occupational health and safety management systems” (Chapter 5.1) in the context of a medium-size developer and construction company. The methodology has been specifically designed to assess whether it is possible for students to acquire skills in ISO 45001 by developing an innovative method for their own employee questionnaires, and this new standard requires professionals who know how to apply the fundamentals in an industrial context. An experiment with 31 mechanical engineering students was carried out. The new methodology was applied based on three learning levels: large group, working group, and individual student. Different research instruments have been applied to evaluate how they perceive the activity with respect to the usefulness for learning and adaptation to reality. It has also tried to evaluate the subjective sensation during the development of the activity: feelings of happiness, self-confidence, and satisfaction of the scholars. The results show that students considered the activity as interesting, useful for learning, and adapted to reality, posing an important challenge that may have served to improve intrinsic motivation in the learning of management systemsS

An Approach to operational control determination for the small or medium size organization

The purpose of this work was to design and assess an effective approach for a small or medium size organization to determine appropriate operational controls for its significant environmental aspects as part of developing and implementing an ISO 14001- type environmental management system. This new approach was determined to be necessary due to the generic nature and broad applicability of the ISO 14001 standard, the lack of appropriate methodology in the professional literature, and the lack of related knowledge and ability in most small or medium sized organizations. As controlling and influencing operations is a vital characteristic of an effective environmental management system, currently available federal and state guidance manuals for small or medium size environmental management systems were reviewed to determine the support that they provided in this area. Unfortunately, these guidance manuals lacked specific direction for identifying potential operational controls. Working with six organizations participating in the Monroe County Strategic Environmental Management Initiative, a new approach was developed and utilized to determine appropriate operational controls for each organization\u27s significant environmental aspects as part of its environmental management system development and implementation. This approach employed the use of: 1) An Operational Control Flowchart (developed for this thesis); 2) Decision Block Descriptions for the Operational Control Flowchart (developed in support of the Operational Control Flowchart); and 3) A cost-benefit analysis. Additionally, it was found that identifying and evaluating operational controls for one obvious environmental aspect in each organization before the organization\u27s environmental aspects were competitively evaluated for significance, provided a convincing example for skeptical participants and enhanced the EMS implementation process. The new approach began by first identifying potential operational controls for all identified significant aspects. Next, a practical cost-benefit analysis was performed for each of the potential operational controls before finalizing performance objectives and targets. As the potential operational controls were found to provide an economic as well as an environmental benefit, the MCSEMI participating organizations were eager to implement them and take advantage of the cost and environmental benefits

Developments in Aerospace Software Engineering practices for VSEs: An overview of the process requirements and practicesof integrated Maturity models and Standards

As part of the evolution of the Space market in the last years – globally referred to as Space 2.0 - small companies are playing an increasingly relevant role in different aerospace projects. Business incubators established by European Space Agency (ESA) and similar entities are evidence of the need of moving initiatives to small companies characterized by greater flexibility to develop specific activities. Software is a key component in most aerospace projects, and the success of the initiatives and projects usually depends on the capability of developing reliable software following well-defined standards. But small entities face some difficulties when adopting software development standards that have been conceived thinking on larger organizations and big programs. The need of defining software development standards tailored to small companies and groups is a permanent subject of discussion not only in the aerospace field, and has led in recent years to the publication of the ISO/IEC 29110 series of systems and software engineering standards and guides, aimed to solve the issues that Very Small Entities (VSEs) () – settings having up to twenty-five people -, found with other standards like CMMI or SPICE. This paper discusses the tailoring defined by different aerospace organizations for VSEs in the aerospace industry, and presents a conceptual arrangement of the standard based on meta-modeling languages that allow the extension and full customization with the incorporation of specific software engineering requirements and practices from ECSS (European Cooperation for Space Standardization)

Teaching and Collecting Technical Standards: A Handbook for Librarians and Educators

Technical standards are a vital source of information for providing guidelines during the design, manufacture, testing, and use of whole products, materials, and components. To prepare students—especially engineering students—for the workforce, universities are increasing the use of standards within the curriculum. Employers believe it is important for recent university graduates to be familiar with standards. Despite the critical role standards play within academia and the workforce, little information is available on the development of standards information literacy, which includes the ability to understand the standardization process; identify types of standards; and locate, evaluate, and use standards effectively. Libraries and librarians are a critical part of standards education, and much of the discussion has been focused on the curation of standards within libraries. However, librarians also have substantial experience in developing and teaching standards information literacy curriculum. With the need for universities to develop a workforce that is well-educated on the use of standards, librarians and course instructors can apply their experiences in information literacy toward teaching students the knowledge and skills regarding standards that they will need to be successful in their field. This title provides background information for librarians on technical standards as well as collection development best practices. It also creates a model for librarians and course instructors to use when building a standards information literacy curriculum.https://docs.lib.purdue.edu/pilh/1004/thumbnail.jp

Vulnerability management service for product life cycle

This thesis was commissioned by a large enterprise. The company requires a vulnerability management solution, which would enable them to manage vulnerabilities throughout the product life cycle. An analysis was required on whether such solution should be purchased or built as an internal project. This study was completed in two main phases. First, a make-or-buy decision was done based on the analysis. Second, a suitable VMS design and implementation was suggested. To collect input for the analysis, all potential users were identified and from them groups of volunteers were invited to interviews. The data from the focus group interviews was then processed and documented in the form of requirement specification for Vulnerability Management Service (VMS). Commercial off-the-shelf solutions were compared against the list of requirements. A second round of review was done with selected commercial products, which fulfilled majority of the requirements. As a result of the performed comparisons, this study concluded that building an own solution would deliver higher Return on Investment (ROI) in long term perspective. VMS stakeholders accepted the recommendation of this study and proceeded to fund the design and implementation. The study goes on to provide guidelines for service design and implementation based on industry best practices. This paper also introduces a useful maturity model for VMS capabilities and monitoring of the evolution of vulnerability management practices

How To Build Enterprise Data Models To Achieve Compliance To Standards Or Regulatory Requirements (and share data).

Sharing data between organizations is challenging because it is difficult to ensure that those consuming the data accurately interpret it. The promise of the next generation WWW, the semantic Web, is that semantics about shared data will be represented in ontologies and available for automatic and accurate machine processing of data. Thus, there is inter-organizational business value in developing applications that have ontology-based enterprise models at their core. In an ontology-based enterprise model, business rules and definitions are represented as formal axioms, which are applied to enterprise facts to automatically infer facts not explicitly represented. If the proposition to be inferred is a requirement from, say, ISO 9000 or Sarbanes-Oxley, inference constitutes a model-based proof of compliance. In this paper, we detail the development and application of the TOVE ISO 9000 Micro-Theory, a model of ISO 9000 developed using ontologies for quality management (measurement, traceability, and quality management system ontologies). In so doing, we demonstrate that when enterprise models are developed using ontologies, they can be leveraged to support business analytics problems - in particular, compliance evaluation - and are sharable

Developing Future UK Energy Performance Standards: The St Nicholas Court project, Final Report

The St Nicholas Court Project was set up to explore the implications of an enhanced energy performance standard for new housing for the design, construction and performance of timber framed dwellings. The energy performance standard, EPS08, is modelled on proposals made by the DETR in June 2000 for a possible review of Part L of the Building Regulations in the second half of the present decade. The overall goal of the project was to support the next revision of Part L through an enhanced body of qualitative and quantitative evidence on options and impacts. The seeds of the project were contained in a report – Towards Sustainable Housing - commissioned by Joseph Rowntree Foundation at the start of the last review of this part of the Building Regulations. The project itself has been based on the St Nicholas Court Development which involves the design and construction of a group of 18 low energy and affordable dwellings on a brown field site in York (see site plan below). The research project was established in two stages. Initial funding was provided by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation in the spring of 1999. This ensured the involvement of the research team from the outset of the development process. Additional funding was provided from late 2000 by the Housing Corporation and by the DETR through the Partners in Innovation programme (responsibility for which now lies with the DTI). The research project was originally divided into five phases – project definition, design, construction, occupation, and communication and dissemination. Delays in site acquisition initially allowed the design phase to be extended, but ultimately forced the abandonment of the construction and occupation phases, and the scaling down of the communication and dissemination phase. Despite the delays, the development itself will now go ahead, with construction starting in mid-2003