Safety engineers focus on development and maintenance of the integrated management system. They act as a quality assurance and conformance specialist. Health and safety engineers are responsible for developing and maintaining the safe work systems for employees and others.

Scope of role

The scope of a safety engineer is the development and maintenance of the integrated management system. Safety engineering professionals must have a thorough understanding of legislation, standards and systems. They need to have a fundamental knowledge of safety,

contract law A contract is a legally enforceable agreement between two or more parties that creates, defines, and governs mutual rights and obligations between them. A contract typically involves the transfer of goods, services, money, or a promise to tran ...

, tort, environmental law,

policy Policy is a deliberate system of guidelines to guide decisions and achieve rational outcomes. A policy is a statement of intent and is implemented as a procedure or protocol. Policies are generally adopted by a governance body within an organ ...

, health, construction, computer science, engineering, labour hire,

plant hire Equipment rental, also called plant hire in some countries (in the UK for instance), is a service industry providing machinery, equipment and tools of all kinds and sizes (from earthmoving to powered access, from power generation to hand-held ...

, communication and psychology. Professional safety studies include construction and engineering, architectural design of

systems A system is a group of interacting or interrelated elements that act according to a set of rules to form a unified whole. A system, surrounded and influenced by its environment, is described by its boundaries, structure and purpose and express ...

s, fire protection,

ergonomics Human factors and ergonomics (commonly referred to as human factors) is the application of psychological and physiological principles to the engineering and design of products, processes, and systems. Four primary goals of human factors learnin ...

, system and

process safety Process safety focuses on preventing fires, explosions and chemical accidents in chemical process facilities or other facilities dealing with hazardous materials such as refineries, and oil and gas ( onshore and offshore) production installations ...

system safety The system safety concept calls for a risk management strategy based on identification, analysis of hazards and application of remedial controls using a systems-based approach. This is different from traditional safety strategies which rely on c ...

, safety and health program management, accident investigation and analysis,

product safety Product may refer to: Business * Product (business), an item that serves as a solution to a specific consumer problem. * Product (project management), a deliverable or set of deliverables that contribute to a business solution Mathematics * Prod ...

, construction safety, education and training methods, measurement of safety performance, human behavior, environmental safety and health, and safety, health and environmental laws, regulations and standards. Many safety engineers have backgrounds or advanced study in other disciplines, such as occupational health and safety, construction management and civil engineering, engineering, system engineering /

industrial engineering Industrial engineering is an engineering profession that is concerned with the optimization of complex processes, systems, or organizations by developing, improving and implementing integrated systems of people, money, knowledge, information an ...

, requirements engineering, reliability engineering,

maintenance Maintenance may refer to: Biological science * Maintenance of an organism * Maintenance respiration Non-technical maintenance * Alimony, also called ''maintenance'' in British English * Champerty and maintenance, two related legal doctri ...

, human factors, operations, education, physical and social sciences and other fields. This extends their expertise beyond the basics of health and safety.

Personality and role

They must be personally pleasant, intelligent, and ruthless with themselves and their organisation. In particular, they have to be able to "sell" the failures that they discover to inspectors/ auditors, as well as the attendant expense and time needed to correct them. Often facts can be uncomfortable for the business. Safety engineers have to be ruthless about getting facts right from others, this includes from their fellow managers and engineers. It is common for a safety engineer to consider registers, plant and equipment, training and competency problems in the same day. Often the facts can be very uncomfortable.

Teamwork

Safety engineers work in a team that includes other engineering disciplines, project management, estimators, environmentalist, asset owners, regulators, doctors, auditors and lawyers. Safety works well in a true risk matrix system, in which safety is a managed by the ISO3100 risk management system and integrated into the safety, quality and environment management systems. However, hierarchy of controls may be more suitable for smaller groups of less than 5 workers as it’s easier to digest.

External links and sources

* Trevor Kletz (1998) ''Process Plants: A Handbook for Inherently Safer Design'' CRC * {{cite book, author=Frank Lees, author-link=Frank Lees, title=Loss Prevention in the Process Industries, edition=3rdEdition, publisher=Elsevier, year=2005, isbn=978-0-7506-7555-0
American Society of Safety Engineers
(official website)
Board of Certified Safety Professionals
(official website)
The Safety and Reliability Society
(official website) Safety engineering Engineering occupations

Scope of role

Personality and role

Teamwork

See also

External links and sources