Safety Meets DevOps
At B&R, safety is not an add‑on but a core system component that must operate reliably throughout the entire lifecycle of a machine or plant, from engineering and commissioning to operation and optimization. Across the automation industry, however, safety‑related and non‑safety‑related applications are still developed largely in isolation.
With SafeDesigner+, B&R takes a fundamentally different approach. By rethinking how safety engineering is integrated into modern software workflows, B&R enables possibilities that go far beyond current industry thinking.
Different worlds in engineering
Non‑safety software development has long adopted modern software engineering practices. Code is text‑based, managed in version control systems, automatically built, and collaboratively reviewed. Transparency and parallel development are standard.
Safety development, by contrast, has traditionally been confined to proprietary tools and closed project formats. In most cases, it is not even possible to review code outside the safety environment, changes are hard to track, and collaboration across domains is limited. As a result, safety and standard applications are often developed in parallel but remain poorly synchronized. Integration happens late, misalignments surface during commissioning, and troubleshooting becomes time‑consuming. These issues are not caused by people or processes, but by limitations in the tool landscape.
Bridging the gap with SafeDesigner+
SafeDesigner+ was developed to overcome exactly this separation and bring safety and non‑safety engineering worlds together. The core idea is simple yet powerful: treat safety code as normal, non-safety source code. Instead of closed project containers, safety applications are stored in a text‑based format. This makes them readable, versionable, and compatible with standard development workflows.
At the same time, SafeDesigner+ includes a TÜV‑certified safety layer that continuously monitors code integrity. Safety‑relevant changes are detected and clearly identified, ensuring that openness never compromises safety. With its command line interface, SafeDesigner+ also enables automated, headless workflows. Safety development can be integrated into build pipelines and shared engineering processes, just like non‑safety software. The result is a unified workflow that supports collaboration, parallel development, and automation across both domains.
A simple example: Pull requests across domains
The benefits of this approach become clear with a familiar software development practice: a pull request. A safety application engineer creates safety‑related code in SafeDesigner+ and commits it to a shared repository. Since the code interfaces with the standard application, a pull request is opened for a non‑safety colleague. That colleague can review the code in a familiar environment, such as B&R Automation Studio Code, without working directly in SafeDesigner+.
Interfaces, logic, and assumptions can be reviewed and discussed early, supported by modern tools such as AI‑assisted code review. Once the pull request is completed, SafeDesigner+ checks whether any safety‑relevant code has been modified. If so, the affected lines are immediately flagged. This enables transparent, cross‑domain collaboration using standard workflows, while maintaining full control over safety‑relevant changes.
SafeDesigner+ shows that functional safety and modern DevOps principles are not contradictory. With text‑based code, automation‑ready workflows, and certified integrity mechanisms, safety becomes a natural part of collaborative machine development. Safety does not have to slow teams down. With SafeDesigner+, it becomes a driver for efficient, future‑ready automation.
More information about our safety portfolio
