Guide to Environment, Safety and Occupational Health (ESOH)

In accordance with MIL-STD-882E, programs with software-controlled or software intensive systems and/or subsystems must assess the software contribution to ESOH risk. Section 4.4 of MIL-STD-882E defines software system safety requirements and Appendix B of MIL-STD-882E provides additional guidance for the software system safety effort. Legacy Program Offices conducting ESOH management using the methodology in previous versions of MIL-STD-882 are required to demonstrate and document in the PESHE a reasonable level of assurance that the system’s software will execute with an acceptable level of ESOH risk.

In accordance with MIL-STD-882E, the program must use the software assessment tables from Section 4.4 of MIL-STD-882E unless tailored alternative tables are formally approved in accordance with DoD Component policy. The software assessment tables include software control categories; software safety criticality matrix with level of rigor (LOR) tasks; and relationships between software criticality indexes, risk level, level of rigor, and risk.

It is important that software be analyzed within the context of the system it functions in. A successful software system safety engineering activity is based on a hazard analysis process, a safety-significant software development process, and LOR tasks. Emphasis is placed on the context of the “system” and how software contributes to or mitigates failures and mishaps. The software system safety effort should be performed in conjunction with the system safety, software development, software test, configuration management, and Independent Verification and Validation team(s).