Engineering for Safety

Chief Engineer, AtkinsRealis

Pete graduated from Heriot-Watt University in 1987 with a Honours Degree in Mechanical Engineering and with a Masters Degree in Nuclear Science and Technology in 1998 from the Royal Naval College at Greenwich.  From 1987 to 2001 he served as an Engineering Officer in the Submarine Service of the Royal Navy.  Following his time in the Royal Navy Pete embarked on a career as an Engineering Consultant specialising in Nuclear Engineering and Nuclear Safety Assurance.  His consultancy career includes management positions with Babtie, Jacobs Engineering, ABS Consulting, Hydrock NMCL and currently AtkinsRealis.  In these international organisations he has been responsible for business development, recruitment and programme delivery across the civil and defence nuclear industry along with other high hazard and regulated industries in the UK.

Pete is a Fellow of the Institution and a longstanding Board Member and past Chair of the Safety & Reliability Group.  More recently he has taken on the role of Trustee at the Hazards Forum on behalf of the IMechE.

Senior Technical Specialist in Safety & Reliability, Rolls-Royce

Mark Ashenden is a Senior Technical Specialist in Safety & Reliability. He has worked at Rolls-Royce for over 30 years with more than 25 of them in the Safety & Reliability discipline as an analyst, team lead or skill owner. He describes himself as a “Professional Pessimist!”.

Mark’s academic qualifications include a Physics degree from Imperial College and an Master’s degree in system Operational Effectiveness from Exeter University. Mark is also a Chartered Engineer and a Fellow of both the Royal Aeronautical Society and the Safety and Reliability Society.

Keith has over 35 years of experience as a safety engineer, making some highly innovative changes within the oil and gas industry. Although once a so called QRA expert, he grew to understand how deceptive these models are and wrote an award-winning paper debunking them technically, mathematically, and legally.

He firmly believes that a paradigm shift is necessary in safety engineering and now promotes scientific method and the Well-Reasoned Argument. He now sits on the IMechE Safety and Reliability Working Group 2 and is author of their publication, ‘ALARP for Engineers: A Technical Safety Guide’ which is intended to be a more rigorous, systematic and legally compliant means of meeting our safety and legal obligations.