Engineering Design Error

Robert Taylor is an engineer with 55 years of experience in research, practical design and of international consulting in the field of risk analysis. Starting at the Theoretical Physics Department at the UKAEA Harwell research laboratory, he moved to the Risø National Laboratory in Denmark where he worked in development and validation of risk analysis procedures for major hazards plants, prevention of design error in nuclear power and in aerospace systems, in software safety analysis and working together with Pr. Jens Rasmussen, on the development of validated methods for human error analysis.Together with his wife Hanne, in 1987 he formed a company to undertake international consulting, with projects on every continent except Antarctica.Major achievements were development of automated methods for hazard and operability analysis and software fault tree analysis, development of an extended evidence based human error probability database, performance of follow up studies of the accuracy of risk assessments compared with actual experience for over 100 plants, and development of a series of methods for identification of design error, one of which became an international standard.