UAS Challenge 2020 Safety Award: feedback on the winners

Understand what factors lead to high scores in this category and identify areas to enhance your team’s submission for this year’s UAS Challenge.

As teams prepare for the start of another year of the UAS Challenge, we caught up with Chief Scrutineer Rod Williams from Frazer Nash Consultancy, who provided some detailed feedback and best practice from the 2020 submissions for the Safety Award.

The Safety Prize is awarded to the team that has shown the strongest approach to safety management through their design review submissions and was awarded to Brunel Unmanned Aerial Systems in 2020. This team top-scored on both the PDR and CDR and showed a strong and consistent approach to safety and its incorporation in the design of their UAS to ensure airworthiness and safe operation throughout.

Key to their CDR submission was a good risk matrix, which contained the key hazards and indicated their levels of risk. This was clearly set out using a colour-coded chart of likelihood versus severity, including risks to health and safety during manufacture, technical airworthiness and air safety in flight. An excellent overall approach to safety followed from the matrix, thus allowing them to identify and mitigate technical risks in all phases, both of design and operation.

Several teams made strong submissions, following similar principles, particularly the Open University, UCL, Imperial College and Huddersfield. By identifying effective controls, they were able to make an appropriate ALARP assessment covering the full life cycle of the UAS – from design and manufacture, through qualification and testing, to operation and maintenance.

Critically, the need for repeatable procedures and checklists, as well as recording data for analysis and improvement were recognised, all vital elements of maintaining airworthiness and flight safety and minimising risk to life.