I agree there's no safety taught example welding they don't know what a fire extinguisher is or how to use it or what hazards might require you to have one on hand as in feul tanks ❓
Original Message:
Sent: 25-10-2023 07:16 PM
From: Benjamin Pitkin
Subject: What Safety Education Should An Undergraduate Engineering Student Receive in University?
Hi Tom,
Thank you for your question. Reflecting on my own experiences during university, and upon entry into the professional workforce, I did note a similar observation to yourself. As not only is there a general lack of training in safety, and risk management, as topics of study in their own right. I found the education would often fail to connect the purely theoretical analysis with the notion of satisfying standards, regulations, and requirements.
I would however add a note of caution, on two key points:
1. University education, generally, ought to be considered primarily as devotion to a field of study - and not merely vocational training. Even the study of engineering, (with a clearly defined vocational pathway), is an intellectual discipline within its own right.
2. Safety, within the industrial and engineering contexts, is an often-misunderstood concept. Its treatment, within the academic context would require care - to keep it within the spirit of an intellectual field-of-study.
To further explain these points. Engineering study, at university, is not about teaching people what to think. It is about fostering a mental discipline. Universities don't teach students what to think. They teach students how to think. So, before the regulations, standards, rules, and procedures make any sense, it is necessary to reinforce the basics. The science, mathematics, theory, and history of engineering practice - based on a first principles approach. Thus, University education - even in Engineering - is always going to be somewhat disconnected from the workplace.
Safety within the workplace is often fraught with over-simplification, incuriosity, inflexibility, and zealotry. All of which being pitfalls which I'd hope any professor would be eager to avoid. The world of safety is often dictated by OH&S and WHS Regulations, that change from one jurisdiction to the next. Invoking requirements dictated to us in painfully lengthy, often vague, (and mind-numbingly prescriptive documents), like the AS 4024 suite, AS ISO 31000, and AS 4343... Mastery of these ought not to be your students' focus.
I would further add, that in those years I supplemented my university education with an Advanced Diploma from TAFE - and was very glad that I did. As I believe that TAFE was far better grounding for vocational training than anything learnt at university. Particularly regarding machinery design, OH&S, and the nuances of Quality Control and Quality Assurance (ISO 9001).
On the whole, I found the notion of safety to be heavily baked into my engineering degree - and having a subject devoted to this topic is an excellent idea. I would propose its key topics as follows:
- Identifying the need for safety: What are the social harms caused by a lack of safety? Why is safety important? Case studies and literature review of harms in society, from products/incidents/poor practices.
- The history of safety: How has the notion of safety changed over time, in the workplace? Provide historical literature review as a timeline. Start with the ancient history, then industrial era, and move into the modern day.
- Health and Safety: Identify the differences between Health and Safety Hazards. How are they quantified? Discuss the modes of harm, nature of hazards, and the methods of quantifying them, likelihood of incident (Safety Hazard); as contrasted with dosages or exposure (Health Hazard). Provide in-depth treatment of known toxicants, gases, chemicals, and their vectors of entry into the human body (ingestion, inhalation, absorption, etc.).
- Consequence and Risk: Expand on the previous topic to explain the risk-matrix. How do we define consequence? What is risk? How does experience and training change risk - or how we understand it? When is risk acceptable? What are the ethical considerations behind risk?
- Controlling Risk: How can we as engineers control risk? Explain the hierarchy of controls, and the benefits of each. The "Swiss cheese" approach. Explain the concept of residual risk. Discuss the principle of unintended consequences, and the balancing of multiple risks. When does 'safety' become a liability?
- Rules and Regulations: What rules and regulations are engineers expected abide by? Discuss OH&S regulations, their intents and purposes, Take5, and SWMS, etc. How do WHS Regulations impact on engineering design?
- Statistics and Modelling: Expand on statistical and analytical methods for modelling risk. Bring in worked examples from historical incidents/disasters and calculate likelihood and harm. Dive deeper into the math and statistics.
- Documentary Studies: Video presentations. Piper-Alpha, Air-Crash Investigations, etc. Watch the presentations. Then have student-led discussions on what went wrong, why, and how it might have been prevented.
- Lessons from History: Research Project. Have students research an engineering disaster of their choosing and submit a report and/or presentation.
^Hope that helps.
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Benjamin Pitkin, MIEAust
Original Message:
Sent: 27-11-2020 11:24 AM
From: Tom Gouldie
Subject: What Safety Education Should An Undergraduate Engineering Student Receive in University?
Over the years I have spoken with recent engineering graduates and they have said they receive effectively no safety education, directed at engineers, in university. They have said they get risk analyses through economics courses, and some decision analyses courses, and use "safety factors" in design courses, but that may not be enough, in my view.
There is a thought that, if undergraduate students were exposed to more "safety for engineers" areas, that it would make them more employable in industry.
Legislation across Australia is pushing to register professional engineers, and that legislation is justified on public safety, so safety should be embedded or instilled in university graduates, in my view.
What do people think: would more grounding in "safety for engineers" for undergraduates, before they take an industry role, be a good thing to do?
Tom Gouldie
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Tom Gouldie
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