Air Force System Safety Handbook

1.4 System Safety Costs. (6:1-4 to 1-6)

How much does a system safety program cost? The implication of that question is whether system safety is wort the expense. Costs of system safety programs are quite small in proportion to contract costs. The contractor part of the F-14 system safety program was only about $5 million for 10 years (less than one-third of the cost of an airplane today). A really large program (e.g., B-1B) might have 30-40 government and contractor people involved at a peak period. Most programs need only one or two system safety personnel in the government program office and four or five at the peak of the contractor’s effort. One person can monitor several subsystem programs simultaneously. Clearly, the saving of just one aircraft by a system safety program pays for that program many times over. A specific assessment of system safety payoff is difficult at best. One can hardly “measure” something that does not happen such as an accident that has been prevented. Approaches other than absolute measurement can be significant as long as a reasonableness test is applied. Data concerning material failures accidents could be compared on a relative basis. Through 1981, the F-4 and F-14 aircraft had somewhat similar missions in the Navy. The F-4 did not have a formal system safety program, but the F-14 airframe did. Cumulative material failure accidents for the F-4 occurred at a rate of 9.52/100,000 hours. The comparable F-14 rate was 5.77/100,000 hours. These data do not “prove” the merit of a system safety program, however. Other factors such as differences in the state of the art applied in each program, different operational environments, design environments, and different contractors probably contributed to the difference between the F-4 and F-14 accident rates.