University Engagement to Improve Safety Education

Safety Case Regime started on 1 September 2017. Under the new regulation, Major Hazard Installations are expected to take on greater responsibilities; proactively identify and manage Safety Health and Environment (SHE) risks through integration of all SHE protocols and demonstrate to regulators that their risks are as low as reasonably practicable.

To bridge the gaps in skills set required for the Safety Case Regime, a series of 8 Process Safety Workshops (Specialist Certificate in Process Safety) was initiated after discussion between Singapore Institute of Technology (SIT) and Industry. It was established that there was a need to harmonize process safety training across the industry in Singapore and a need to train and up-skill technical engineers/specialists, technicians, and process safety practitioners so that in-house capability can be built up to meet the new standard for Safety Case in Singapore.

After discussion with industry on their needs, program outline was drafted and subsequently sent to industry’s Process Safety Subject Matter Experts for comments. Upon receiving their feedback, the Process Safety Workshop Series for Pharmaceutical Industry was developed. The training pedagogy for this workshop integrated hands-on learning at workplace by collaborating with company for plant walk through to relevant areas during the workshop.

In addition, the fundamental topics from the workshops were integrated into the B.Eng. Pharmaceutical Engineering’s Process Safety Module to ensure new engineering graduates entering into the pharmaceutical industry have basic process safety skills needed by the industry.