What Does
Margin Of Safety Mean?
The margin of safety is an engineering concept that refers to the amount of additional capacity built into a system. This additional capacity allows the system to perform safely even when subject to conditions that exceed the load it was designed to handle (known as the design load).
For example, an elevator meant to handle loads up to 1,000 lbs might be designed with a margin of safety that allows it to hold and transport up to 2,000 lbs. This allows the system to become overloaded to a certain extent without putting users at risk or failing catastrophically.
Margins of safety are applied to a wide variety of systems, including electrical grids, fire suppression systems, load-bearing structures, personal fall arrest equipment, nuclear plants, and airplanes.
The margin of safety is also sometimes referred to as the safety margin.
Safeopedia Explains Margin Of Safety
When designing any product or facility, avoiding risks and ensuring the safety of users or occupants are major considerations. Including a margin of safety in the design is one way to secure these outcomes.
The margin of safety does not necessarily mean that the system will not be affected by excess capacity. The system may still fail, need to be reset, or require repairs. The margin of safety is only intended to prevent a complete failure or a failure that could result in serious harm.
Ronald A. Beaulieu, Safety Basis Program Manager for the Nuclear Operations Directorate, notes that the margin of safety is the range between two conditions that would be identified in a hazard control document:
- The most adverse condition that could occur from an operational upset, as estimated in the safety analysis
- The worst-case value that is known to be safe from an engineering perspective
Engineering Response to Safety Risks
There are four distinct categories of engineering responses to safety risks:
- Inherently safe design (removing the source of risk)
- Fail safe designs (minimizing the impact of failure)
- Safety reserves (overdesigning so the system can withstand greater stress)
- Procedural safeguards (training and other human processes aimed at counteracting an identified risk)
These responses are similar to the hierarchy of hazard controls, with inherently safe design acting as an elimination of the hazard, fail safe design corresponding to engineering controls, and procedural safeguards being a version of administrative controls.
For effective safety management, it is important to precisely understand the safety risk to calculate a suitable safety margin. However, this is not practically possible, as there are many unknown factors, some of which are detected after the process has been implemented.