Ben Fulford
Ben Fulford builds the tools that safety engineering runs on: AI-assisted hazard analysis, graph-based hazard logs, assurance evidence and the training behind them. His argument is that safety engineering runs on tools from another era: hazard logs that are static records in a database, with no model of how hazards, causes and controls relate; HAZOP run through spreadsheets; competence evidenced by attendance certificates. The repetitive work those tools create keeps engineers off the problems that need their judgement.
He has over fifteen years in functional safety across defence, maritime, nuclear, aerospace and automotive: safety manager on the Astute-class submarine Platform Management System, developed to SIL2, and Independent Safety Auditor on radar, software and autonomous programmes.
He led BMT's AI-HAZOP work and was lead author of the paper presented at the Safety-Critical Systems Symposium and published; the current work uses GraphRAG so every claim in the output traces to the evidence behind it. He wrote Effectiveness of Controls, which brings cybersecurity into safety assurance; SCSC published it and it is applied across multiple platforms.
At BMT he leads the Smarter Working with Technology programme and designed its prompt engineering course, also sold externally, and a senior leadership AI programme. He sits on the SCSC Security-Informed Safety Working Group.
He writes Modernising Safety Engineering, a fortnightly Substack, and speaks on AI adoption in regulated industries: SCSC keynote, IChemE, conferences and podcasts. Organisations wanting to get useful with AI, or a speaker, can reach him at benfulford.com. BEng (Hons) Aerospace Engineering, Manchester. MIET.