This journal follows a double-issue of Safety and Reliability on Railway Safety that was very well received by SaRS Members and a wider audience.
A recent report from our publishers Taylor and Francis informed us that downloads from the Safety and Reliability Journal website reached over 23,000 for 2023. This was a tremendous improvement on 17,000 in 2022, and our own tracking tells us that this will improve again in 2024.
The charitable aims of the Safety and Reliability Society are to disseminate knowledge by publishing internationally, and we are committed to achieving that aim. By publishing this journal both online and in print, we are able to reach different audiences.
This information about wider audiences made us think about other parts of SaRS and how we can extend our knowledge reach.
Webinars – how have they performed after the pandemic?
The society’s move to online knowledge-share began pre-pandemic; when the pandemic struck the Trustees took the decision to pause paid events and move back to the free event model. This meant that the charitable aims were being met through providing:
Branch meetings that are free to attend for members and non-members.
Webinars that are live-streamed free of charge for everyone to view.
As the pandemic meant working from home for many people, CPD moved online and those who previously attended meetings were watching webinars. Our webinar attendance sometimes exceeded 500 individuals – that is actual attendance not booking.
Since then, while the audience has dropped slightly, we still achieve 200+ at some of our webinars, often including international attendees along with many who are not members of SaRS. This is important to us, not just from a potential membership point of view, but also from a charitable perspective – our aims are met.
We place recordings in our Members’ area, and we have found that the number of SaRS member and Affiliate Employees’ views has stayed similar to during the pandemic, despite people returning to work. This reflects the importance our members and affiliate organisations place on maintaining their CPD.
Collaboration – how we meet in person
SaRS is able to hold face-to-face meetings, but we are responsive to our volunteers’ needs and most of our meetings have, so far, stayed online. While this has many advantages, including inclusion, it means the networking opportunities are not the same as in-person meeting.
Yet our members and Affiliate Organisations have found new ways to collaborate, often sharing cross-industry knowledge. Some examples of this are:
Affiliate organisations employees meeting another Affiliate Organisation to discuss technical knowledge.
Affiliate organisations sharing Engineering Council registration in-company mentoring practice.
Affiliate organisations hosting SaRS branch meetings and networking.
This extends SaRS technical knowledge reach into companies and organisations.
Hybrid Meeting
SaRS extended its webinar facility during the pandemic in order to maintain a branch meeting drumbeat. With some members requesting that in-person branch meetings be streamed so they can either watch live remotely, or watch the recording at a later date, the Society has held hybrid events.
This is not always possible due to technical restrictions, but it is always the intention to reach the maximum audience and that, wherever possible, meetings will be both in-person and streamed.
This has needed both an investment in equipment for SaRS and an investment in time and knowledge by our volunteers, which SaRS is grateful for.
The latest hybrid triumph is the London Branch Early Career Presentation, which is in-person, live streamed and available in the Members Area of the website www.sars.org.uk
Disseminating Safety and Reliability Knowledge Internationally - how you can help us
We hope that you are benefitting from our growing body of knowledge, and that you are inspired to share your knowledge. If you would like to contribute, you can find our media specification for all our online and hard copy publications here:
www.sars.org.uk/submit-your-work-to-sars/
Do get in touch. Email me on [email protected] to arrange a call to talk about knowledge share and getting involved.
This Journal 42.4 contains two papers. The first from Omidi et al. looks at an assessment of emergency risk management and resilience engineering at management levels of a high hazard industry. The second from Todinov considers whether system reliability can be predicted from average component reliabilities.
This leaves me only to thank you again for your continued support of the Society.
Registration with The Engineering Council through the Safety and Reliability Society
The Safety and Reliability Society was successful in April 2020 in their application for a Licence to Register CEng and IEng SaRS Members. The SaRS Engineering Membership Committee has been busy in the first year of the Licence honing our systems and working with the Engineering Council to provide a route to registration for our members. Many thanks to the Engineering Council for their guidance and support in SaRS achieving this goal. In March 2021 the Engineering Council extended this interim licence for a further four years.
We are delighted to announce that more SaRS Members have been registered through the new, direct process. Congratulations to:
Andrew Brown
Karissa Chan
Registering with the Engineering Council through SaRS
Our registration application programme is open, and we are happy to receive applications from candidates for CEng or IEng.
You can find details of how to apply and guidance for your application on the SaRS website under the main Membership green tab—please select ‘Registering with the Engineering Council’ on the drop-down menu.
We strongly recommend that you read UK-SPEC in conjunction with the application process and make sure that you are planning and completing your continuing professional development (CPD).
As always, we are happy to answer any questions and assist you through the process with three rounds of professional review advice (PRA). Please get in touch if you have any questions by emailing [email protected].
We very much look forward to receiving your application to begin your journey to registration with SaRS.