Louise Whiting is appointed Chair of the Safety and Reliability Society

The Annual General Meeting of the Safety and Reliability Society was held on the 22nd November 2022 and Louise Whiting, a SaRS Fellow and member of SaRS Council, was appointed the new chair of the Society.

Louise Whiting has worked in operating oil and gas majors for over 11 years starting her career in BP in the UK and progressing to Shell in various locations including Iraq. During that time, she has demonstrated strong personal commitment to personal development first in process engineering gaining chartership with IChemE in 2013, followed by Shell technical safety technical authority (level 2) qualification in 2015 and Professional Process Safety Engineer with the IChemE in 2018. In 2019 Louise set up Barberton Limited which provides risk management solutions. Louise is passionate about education which defines her contribution to SaRS as Fellow.

Chris Harrison was appointed Chair Elect. Chris said, ‘I am delighted to be taking up the position of chair elect of the Safety and Reliability Society and very much look forward to progressing its aims’.

From an early age Chris has been intrigued by difficult problems and understanding things. His favourite subjects at school were maths and physics and this interest eventually led to him completing a physics degree at the University of Oxford. After graduating in 2000 Chris started his career working as a Safety Analyst for the National Air Traffic Services (NATS). It was there that he put his problem-solving skills to good use entering the field of safety and reliability and working on modelling the risk from a mid-air plane collision. Having now developed a keen interest in risk the opportunity arose in 2003 to join the Rail Safety and Standards Board as a risk analyst. He was set to work on developing and maintaining the Safety Risk Model (SRM), the GB rail industry’s network wide model of safety risk. Today he is a Principal Risk Analyst and the technical lead for the SRM, helping to set the strategic vision for the model and evolving it to meet the rail industry’s future demands. During his time at the Rail Safety and Standards Board Chris has undertaken a wide range of projects analysing and modelling risk for problems encompassing the full range of railway technology and operations, particularly in the area of train accident risk. He is Chartered Physicist through the Institute of Physics, a Fellow of the Safety and Reliability Society (SaRS) as well as the Editor-in-Chief for their peer reviewed journal Safety and Reliability.

Officers of the Society who continue are as follows:

Richard Denning – President

Peter Stanton – Finance Director

Andrew Buchan – Past Chair

Jacqueline Ward – CEO/Company Secretary

The retiring Chair, Andrew Buchan, thanked Louise and Chris for their support of the Society. He also thanked Peter Sheppard for his extended support as he retires from Trustee and Director Board.

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