I have been an active member of the International System Safety Society (ISSS) since about 1984, attending conferences, launching local chapters, serving as an Executive officer (Past President), editor of the journal, contributor in conferences and webinars, etc. I am saying that it is an organization that I am very familiar with – and I have been concerned about its imminent demise the entire time.

For those who might not know anything about the ISSS (just about everyone in the world) a brief introduction might help understand why this is important. System safety (SS) is an engineering practice developed to assist design and development programs minimize safety hazards through a process of identifying potential hazards and designing them out, principally through design decisions. It includes “worker safety” of course, but mostly from the point of view of making safe machines, rather than how to work around unsafe machines. Perhaps it is easiest to think of the profession as “product safety”, although the definition of what the “product” goes well beyond a product on the market, the scope of the effort can, and often does, include everything about the thing being considered – including testing, manufacturing, use, disposal, environment impacts, etc. It is the BIG picture of safety. Because SS is an engineering activity, there is a large body of knowledge and experience required to be efficient, effective and successful. There is a big need for education, but almost no means of obtaining that except through the ISSS and a few consultants that provide specialized courses for a few industries. There are very few university courses covering the profession, or degrees in the field. It is really a profession based upon OJT (On Job Training).

My personal opinion is that SS engineers can, and should, provide critical inputs into ALL design and development programs, both government and general industry, including all types of products. However, with the current worldwide membership of less than 500 members of the society, and perhaps five times that number of active SS engineers, there isn’t much of a chance for that to happen.

When I was elected President in 1990 I found I was taking the reins of an organization that is as close to bankrupted as you can get – the discussions were all about what would happen when we went into the red. My position is that we can’t go into the red because nobody will lend us any money. We pulled together and missed that one by the skin of our teeth, eventually increasing our membership by almost five fold, with money in the bank. That was until 2008 happened and government sequestration took hold and attendance at our conferences was deemed “unnecessary” – cutting our membership and related income to the point were we could just barely break even. Then came covid!

So the ISSS is in a downward financial path. I am wondering what can be done to remedy that situation. Our current sources of income are limited to annual membership fees and income from our annual conferences. Our last two virtual conferences were virtual because of covid, and provided a net loss rather than income. Perhaps there will be a face-to-face conference this year in August, but I am hearing that some of the corporations that traditionally send system safety engineers to the event have eliminated budgets because of their fear about sending anyone to large gatherings of people. Live conferences require hotel rooms and facilities, which require contracts specifying minimum rooms number and other expenses to keep the rates low enough for the conference attendance fees within reason. The contracts are signed up to a year in advance, with the potential for turning a potential money making event into a devastating loss. I am getting very nervous about this year’s conference.