The first step is to decide how to approach the product development program with product safety in mind.

Following are the four ways I've seen:

1. Make no claims and do nothing - just build and sell... This is not at all recommended! It could be extremely expensive!
   
   
2. Make claims and still do nothing - just build and sell... This is not at all recommended either! It could be even more expensive!
   
   
3. Make claims, build and 'force-validate' - then sell... This is a very common approach: make the claims, build the product, then worry about the safety regulations and try to 'test them into' the product by 'force'. Since several 're-spins' of design and testing may be involved in order to meet the claims, this ad hoc approach can drive up the costs of both the project and product beyond what was expected.
   
   
4. Investigate safety issues; then make claims, design for safety, validate to comply and produce accordingly - then sell... This is also a common (and most optimum) approach. Knowing the regulations that apply to a product allows you to (1) make accurate claims, (2) design the specific safety factors into the product, (3) validate against known gauges and (4) ensure that production is able to maintain a safe product.

Note that such considered actions for product safety are actually the beginning of a methodology called Product Liability Prevention (PLP), which is a very desirable practice for most any product developer and extremely necessary for products that have a high safety recognition, such as medical, military, transportation, etc.