Issue 39.1 of the SaRS Journal welcomes Dr Mikela Chatzimichailidou as editor of a special issue that features excellent papers on systems engineering.
Reading through Mikela’s editorial and the papers made me think about the aims and objectives of the Safety and Reliability Society. In a busy business environment, it is easy to overlook the grass-roots reasons that made a group of people back in 1980 think about forming a Society.
2020 marks the 40th anniversary of the Safety and Reliability Society and my 25th year working for the Society. When I joined in 1995 some of the founding members were still on SaRS Council so I know first-hand the passion and time sacrifice that came with undertaking such an initiative.
The founders of Safety and Reliability Society (SaRS) were concerned that the knowledge produced in safety and reliability operated in discipline and sector silos and they wanted to find a way that everyone across all industries could share and compare knowledge.
The journal was an ideal way to do this and, back in the days when the internet did not have the reach it had today, it was produced in-house from papers across all safety, risk and reliability disciplines. Over 40 years the SaRS Journal has represented the charitable aims of the Society, which are broadly to disseminate knowledge, and grown into a peer reviewed international publication. You can find every issue of the Journal going back to 1980 on the journal website with the full text of all papers being accessible from the Member’s area of the SaRS website – there are many seminal industry papers that have contributed ideas and theories over the years to make the industry what it is today.
Transfer of knowledge is the mainstay of growth and Journal 39.1 presents a set of papers that are united by systems Theory but that cover various cross-industry sectors. This cross-industry representation is the essence of SaRS and I hope you will find this issue, as with the long history of SaRS journals, interesting and informative. SaRS can, as mentioned by Mikela in her editorial, also facilitate transfer of knowledge across sectors through their branch meetings and/or LinkedIn group. See our website www.sars.org.uk for details.
As ever, SaRS is seeking papers and special issues to contribute to the steady march of knowledge growth that our membership values. If you can provide either or both please do get in touch with us.
As well as looking for papers and special issues, we are keen for volunteers to review and carry out other tasks for the journal. As you can see from above, participation is an important part of CPD and counts towards your learning and experience.
As we move forward with our journal, we are eager to expand it and to provide even more CPD for our members and beyond.
If you would like to volunteer please email [email protected]. We welcome relevant papers and articles for both academia and industry.
I will be celebrating my 25 years at SaRS with my colleagues at the AGM in November. As for SaRSʼ own big birthday: watch this space. Exciting things are happening at SaRS and I hope to be able to tell you more in the next issue of the SaRS journal. In the meantime, a big thank you to the army of volunteers who still, after 40 years, are committed to SaRS. Apart from myself, the SaRS journal is entirely managed by volunteer effort – industry voices who sacrifice their time in the name of furthering safety, risk and reliability knowledge.
CEO and Managing Editor, Safety and Reliability
[email protected]