SHARP Solutions

Value-Added Engineering for the Customer through Innovative Engineering Solutions

SHARP’s Safety, Survivability, and Risk Management Department offers innovative solutions to customer’s design problems through a performance-based Risk Management Approach to design and engineering. SHARP’s advantages include:

• Nationally Certified Risk Managers and Professional Engineers on Staff

• Proven application of performance-based standards for bottom-line cost savings

• An ISO 9001 Certified Task Management system

• Many years of successful government contract performance

• A staff with prior Navy and Coast Guard Service, as Senior Enlisted Leaders through Commanding Officers, in touch with the end user’s needs at all levels

Recent SHARP Solutions:

• A customer was building a large capacity passenger vessel (over 4,000 passengers) and felt that full compliance with the new USCG Lifesaving Equipment Regulations would be too high a cost, in dollars, weight, and lost deck space, as compared to the benefit provided. The SHARP Solution was to perform a full risk analysis of the vessel route and service. Based on casualty records, stakeholder interviews, and operational details, SHARP analyzed the risks and developed an integrated Risk Mitigation package of Training, Design, and Operational Procedures, that the U.S. Coast Guard accepted as providing a benefit equivalent to the full complement of primary lifesaving equipment. The result for the customer was less primary lifesaving equipment, a safer operation and millions of dollars saved in reduced lifecycle cost.
   

• A customer was concerned that the USCG’s stairtower requirements would enclose spaces, hindering passenger egress and creating security problems. The customer wanted to eliminate stairtowers from the vessel, with no reduction in passenger safety. The SHARP Solution was to conduct a performance based analysis of high capacity stairtowers and develop a new design that provided an equivalent level of safety for passengers. The resulting design involved reducing fireloads, increasing sprinkler systems, mitigating high-risk features, and providing contingency plans for emergency egress. The U.S. Coast Guard accepted this solution and the customer now has a safer, more secure design.
   

• The Office of Naval Research (ONR) was concerned with the high cost of full scale application of MIL-STD-882 (Standard Practice for System Safety) to the 625 KW Ship Service Fuel Cell Program, being jointly developed by ONR and a commercial partner, managed by NAVSEA 05R, and executed by NAVSEA Philadelphia Code 824. The SHARP Solution was to evaluate the system risks and tailor MIL-STD-882 to this Fuel Cell system. MIL-STD-882 application costs were reduced by approximately 50% as a result of this approach.