The Ingenieur Vol 59 July-Sept 2014 The Ingenieur Vo. 59, July-Sept 2014 | Page 13

S

afety is defined as free from harm or risk of
injury. Unfortunate engineering failures and
incidents have contributed to unnecessary
loss of life and serious damage to properties,
casting a pall over the public confidence in the
engineering profession.
Engineers who design, or make, or put to
practical use products in the workplace should
ensure the safe design, fit for purpose, and safety
of use through safe engineering practices. This
requires understanding the risk, the analysis of the
severity of the risk, evaluation of proper protective
measures, compliance solutions and means to
acceptable standards and codes, maintenance
regimes to be instituted and training to be provided
to personnel.
Safe engineering involves all relevant
branches of engineering and specialists capable
of assessing, designing and project managing all
aspects of the products in the workplace. Practising
safe engineering can improve the safety of work
sites, manufacturing facilities, work environment
and products as regulations and safety standards
change and assure that engineered systems can
still provide acceptable levels of safety. The term
product is used here to refer to any designed
system, plant, component, part, or something
that is engineered, manufactured, constructed,
fabricated, imported or processed and that
is usually sold to user. A system is an orderly
arrangement of components that interact among
themselves and with external components, other
systems, and human operators to perform some
intended function. An industrial plant may be
treated as a system consisting of a number of
components or as a super-system consisting of a
number of systems. [5]

Duty of care
Engineers owe statutory duty of care to persons
at work, other persons, and the public at large.
[2], [3], [6]
To discharge such legal obligations, to the
standard as far as practical they have to ensure
all reasonable and proper steps have been taken;
for example, beginning at the conceptual stage to
evaluate the risk of a petroleum processing system
and to ensure that all the legal and contractual
requirements, including the non-mandatory
requirements such as management systems

and safe engineering practices, have been duly
complied with and followed respectively. While
statutes and regulations may differ to some degree
or intent, all without exception are concerned with
ethical practice of engineering as it relates to public
safety, health and welfare. These requirements are
the cornerstone of sound engineering practice.
Technical expertise is indispensable for a
professional engineer but at the same time detailed
knowledge is worthless without the skills to
properly employ it or the ability to convince people
and the industry that its fruits are worthwhile.
Thus engineers should work closely with the
clients at all levels to develop practical compliance
solutions and strategies to safeguard mutual
interest. They have to accept responsibility for
making safe engineering decisions that conform
with safety, health, and welfare requirements of
the public and disclose promptly active and latent
factors that might endanger the public or the
environment.
There should be no compromise for any slack
or shortcomings in their statutory and professional
duties. Failure to comply could lead to punitive
action to be taken by the relevant enforcing
authorities or professional bodies.

Adoption of hazard and risk
analysis methodology
All too often products have been built in which
attention to hazards, safety, and loss prevention
have not been given as much attention as it has to
performance in the design of the components. The
purpose of a hazard and risk analysis of a product
is to study the effects that each component has
on the operation of every other component and the
independent effect that each component has on
the working of the product. [5]
What are the hazard and risk evaluation
requirements of products that can be used
and followed by the engineering profession?
Engineering professionals must have specific and
value-added knowledge of the plant, processes or
the system, risk, complexities, intricacies and a
host of others. Each of these areas concern the
engineering background and together are essential
in establishing, controlling, maintaining and
sustaining a safe environment or safe workplace.
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