Frequently Asked Questions

ALARP stands for "as low as reasonably practicable." It's a principle used in safety management, particularly in risk assessment, to indicate that risks should be reduced to the lowest reasonably achievable level. This involves weighing the risk against the cost, time, and effort required to control it. Safety should always remain the priority over cost, however, the application of ALARP provides structure to the design engineer as to what target risk level they should be aiming for, i.e. what good like in comparable industries.

In the UK, the ALARP principle is enshrined in the Health and Safety at Work Act. In the US, a similar concept called ALARA (as low as reasonably achievable) is used in radiation protection.

ALARP Solutions works in the Defence, Oil & Gas, Civil Nuclear, Commercial Aviation/Space, Commercial Maritime, and Rail industries. ALARP Solutions is currently expanding its operations and footprint and is looking to move into Mining, and renewable energy.

Often, ALARP Solutions system safety consultants need to advise clients of the acceptability of risk.

Under Australian law, the duty holder is required to demonstrate they have eliminated the risk, or minimised the risk where elimination is not possible, so far as reasonably practicable.

The ‘ALARP Principle’ guides the design engineer and the safety specialist into setting tolerable risk targets for hazardous situations.

The first step is setting a standard of performance by which risk can be excepted (typically by a regulator).

In using the ALARP principle, we consider three broad categories of risk

• Unacceptable risk – The risk level is so high that we are not prepared to tolerate it as the losses far outweigh any possible benefits in the situation.

• Tolerable risk – While we would rather not have the risk, it is tolerable from the perspective of the benefits gained. The cost of further risk reduction must be balanced against the gain and then a compromise is agreed.

• Negligible risk – This risk is broadly accepted by most people, and no further risk reduction effort is necessary.

If the risk for the hazardous situation falls the Unacceptable region, further risk reduction must be done.

If the risk falls under the Tolerable or ALARP region, further risk reduction should be done where it is reasonable and practicable to do so. To evaluate what is reasonable, quantitative or qualitative risk analysis can be conducted to support the risk assessment.

If the risk falls under the Broadly Acceptable region, no further risk reduction activity is required if the target risk level has been achieved.

Note: Under the Australian WHS legislation, duty holders are still required to consider further risk reduction even in this region, where it is reasonable and practicable to implement additional controls.

ALARP, like ALARA (As Low As Reasonably Achievable) are based on a Target based approach to risk management.

Depending on the industry you are in, the terms SFARP (So far as Reasonably Practicable) or SFAIRP (So far as is reasonably practicable) is the common law approach to risk management. Specifically, the reasonably practicable test asks the accountable officer of the organisation (referred to as the Person Conducting the Business or Undertaking or PCBU) “Have you done all that is both reasonable and practicable to reduce the risk”. This infers they have also done all that is reasonable and practicable to identify all reasonably foreseeable hazards in the first instance. The SFARP justification is a statement made by the accountable officer that they would make in a court of law should someone be injured or killed in the workplace.

SFARP applies to designers of plant, importers, constructors, and operators.

Should an incident or accident occur, the duty holder of the PCBU must be able to defend their individual actions (or inactions) and explain why they, as the duty holder, reached a point where it was not reasonable or practicable to do any more with respect to reducing the health and safety risk in the workplace.

The two are not the same, although the ALARP principle can be used to support a SFARP position.

ALARP Solutions offer professional risk and safety-based consultancy services and training to its clients across each of the three business lines:

• Systems, Safety and Reliability Engineering

• Governance Risk and Assurance

• Business Advisory

No. We work on several Defence projects at any one time, however, we work across all hazardous industries where duty holders require a high-level of assurance due to the nature of the hazards and risks associated with their business or undertaking.

We support short and longer-term projects depending on client requirements.

No project is too small or too big, although for larger projects, we will team with our Strategic and other partners to ensure we have the capacity and capability to undertake the work.

Our team comprises governance, assurance, risk, systems engineering, and system safety specialist.

All consulting staff have an engineering, technical, or science background with most having formal post-graduate qualifications in a risk and safety discipline.

As a guide, in terms of experience in their field:

• Senior Principal Consultants: > 20 years

• Principal Consultants: 12 - 20 years

• Senior Consultants: 8 - 12 years

• Lead Consultants: 5 - 8 years

• Consultants: 3 - 5 years

• Junior Consultants: 1 – 3 years

Yes. We can work both onsite or remotely depending on client and project needs.

Often projects require our staff to be embedded within the client organisation for an extended period due to the nature of the project. During this period, our resources are treated as a member of the client organisation and comply with client quality, data, and security requirements. There are other projects where the arrangements are such that we conduct most of our work offsite and work remotely, only visiting the client organisation to touch base and hold meetings and workshops.

Building a trusted relationship with a new client relies on getting to know the client organisation and key individuals we are working with. Accordingly, our preference is to spend as much time as possible working onsite in the early phases of a new project.

We make every effort to support our clients as soon as they are required. This requires our clients to give us as much notice on upcoming projects as possible so we can juggle our resourcing profile to make sure we can offer the best resources for the task at hand.

Our mantra is always “Best team for the project”. We will not put forward resources who are not best placed to deliver the project outcomes and exceed our client expectations.

We are a risk and safety consultancy of distinction. Governance, risk, assurance, and system safety engineering is our core business. It is not just a capability we have in-house that we can offer clients from time to time, it is what we do every day – and we are very good it.

We pride ourselves on being the best at what we do, but we have no plans on being the biggest consultancy. We don’t have the bureaucracy that comes with being a big company and even the Executive team are technical experts and fee earning consultants who are highly regarded by their peers in industry.

We have a team first motto – The strength of our service offering is the collective knowledge and experience of our team.

We will always provide frank and fearless advice – We are independent and will tell clients what they need to know to comply with legislation and conform to industry best practice, even if they do not want to hear it.

We have on occasion walked away from a project where we were not adding value or our ethics did not align with the client organisation.

Yes - Absolutely.

Not only that, we offer software that supports this activity.

ALARP Solutions is the reseller and distributor for all ASCE software in the Asia Pacific.

Within ASCE is the EGRAM Plug-in. This software aims to help organisations answer two key questions:

1. Is my organisation in good health, and

2. Are my assets and/or services in good health.

The EGRAM is a codified approach to answering these questions through decomposing three claims, underpinned by arguments, which, when completed by the client organisation, is supported by their objective quality evidence.

A key aspect of any safety assessment is to ensure the system under review complies with legislative and contractual requirements.

It is important to note that as specialist system safety engineers, our job is to identify safety requirements at the beginning of a product’s lifecycle, which includes:

• identification of applicable legislation,

• selecting appropriate standards to support the design, and

• deriving safety requirements to support the system design.

As the product is built and tested, our team can support the design duty holder demonstrate the requirements have been achieved. This is a key component of any Safety Case.

Yes - Absolutely. We offer training in each of our core business areas. Our training capability includes training development and facilitation.

Most of our training courses delivered are to in-house teams. All of our courses can be tailored to individual client/team requirements.

ALARP Solutions is currently getting its suite of training courses accredited at the VET and post-graduate level and we have partnerships with AimPoint and Curtin University.

Give us a call on 08 7095 9900 or send an email to

Our offices are based in SA (Head Office - Mawson Lakes), WA (Cockburn) and ACT/NSW (Fyshwick).

We work with clients across Australia and have in the past, supported international projects in New Zealand and the UK.

ALARP Solutions is the authorised reseller for ASCE software which includes the EGRAM Plug-in.

We can support organisations implement these tools into their business as we are also the authorised training organisation for these tools.

ALARP Solutions has a product development team that is currently developing new safety related software tools.