INNOVATIVE SOLUTIONS AND TECHNOLOGIES
Software Reliance and Concerns in Projects
Engineering and geoscience professionals working in a range of application areas (such as structural, geotechnical, and industrial control engineering) increasingly depend on sophisticated software to both control critical equipment and perform analysis. Professionals taking responsibility for outcomes dependent on software must have an increased understanding of how to manage the associated risk. This presentation brings knowledge from the discipline of software engineering to aid in software-related risk management in other fields of engineering and geoscience.
Speaker
Simon Diemert, P.Eng.
Simon is a systems and software engineer at Critical Systems Labs, a Vancouver-based engineering consultancy specializing in engineering for software-intensive critical systems. Simon practices software and systems engineering in a number of domains, including health systems, automotive systems, rail control, and industrial control systems. He is also a co-author of Engineers and Geoscientists BC’s practice guideline on development of safety-critical software and chairs Engineers and Geoscientists BC’s software engineering advisory group. Simon holds a Bachelor of Software Engineering and a Master of Computer Science from the University of Victoria.
Managing Geohazard Risk with Cambio
Over the past 20 years, we have used our applied earth science knowledge to support clients with asset and risk management using Cambio™. Cambio allows for a systematic and proactive approach towards identifying, evaluating, and managing geotechnical challenges, and is currently used for pipeline, transportation, mining, communities, and energy sector projects. Pipelines that have gone through the full geohazard risk management lifecycle have a five-fold reduction in geohazard failures compared to the north American failure rate. In this presentation we will describe the geohazard risk management program operationalized in Cambio that enables advances in traditional engineering and geoscience practices.
Speakers
Eldon Wong, P.Eng.
Eldon is a senior manager of software development at BGC Engineering. He has applied his software engineering expertise in various domains including naval defense, aviation, internet search, surveillance and access control, and applied earth sciences. At BGC, he is leading a team of 40 software developers and testers to develop Cambio, an enterprise software solution that is used for mission-critical industrial applications such as monitoring pipeline and highway right-of-ways for geohazards and protecting communities from potentially catastrophic landslides and debris flows.
Sarah Newton, P.Eng. (Alberta)
Sarah Newton, P.Eng., has over 11 years of experience at BGC, specializing in geohazard identification, assessment, and risk management. She has been a project manager for engineering and software projects and has field experience in diverse environments. Sarah has contributed to the advancement of geohazard risk assessment algorithms and data collection methodologies, including the development of screening level algorithms to assess pipeline vulnerability to hydrotechnical forces at watercourses and ground movement forces at landslides. Sarah also leads product development for BGC’s geohazard risk management software, Cambio. She has supported the implementation of geohazard integrity management programs, the methods of which have been applied to 450,000km of pipelines in North and South America.