WHAT SAFETY ENGINEERS DO

A professional safety engineer is trained in studies that include industrial hygiene, engineering hazard controls, system and process safety, ergonomics, and health management, product safety and construction safety. It also encompasses environmental safety and health, and safety, health and environmental laws, regulations and standards as well as accident investigation and analysis. Safety engineers are usually already engineers in other disciplines such as industrial engineering, mining engineering etc. They develop procedures and design systems that keep workers, users of a facility (or even people in the vicinity) from getting sick or injured and keep property from being damaged. They combine their knowledge of health or safety and of systems engineering to make sure that chemicals, machinery, software, furniture and other products are not going to cause harm to people or buildings. In other words, they anticipate, identify and evaluate hazardous conditions and practices. They develop hazard control designs, methods, procedures and programs which they implement, administer as well as advise others on such programmes. It is not unusual for safety engineers to consider software, chemical, electrical, mechanical, procedural, and training problems at the same time.

NEED FOR SAFETY ENGINEERS

Why is it imperative to hire safety engineers? Financially, it makes sense. With safety ensured, companies actually save money as they spend less on insurance and medical costs. Secondly, when workers know work place safety is being taken care of professionally, they will feel better about their jobs and become more productive in turn. They are also less likely to quit, which eliminates the need for companies to hire new staff whom they will have to train. Even if an accident should occur, the workers know there are personnel on hand who can act quickly to take care of the problem. Safety engineers look for ways to prevent accidents in the workplace. Sometimes, it’s their job to take into consideration the design and material of buildings and what a building would be used for, as well as emergency exits Depending on the industry they are employed in, they may also test air and water quality, noise levels and temperature and constantly monitor equipment to ensure all are in top working condition. In conclusion, safety is, undeniably, one of the more important disciplines in engineering and, if not implemented, may lead to disaster and loss of lives.