Process safety education: A comparative study

Abstract

More than a decade ago Dutch and German Institutions expressed their worries about the decline in education on and research in the field of Process Safety. More recently the IChemE (UK) published a report “Improve Process Safety Education in Undergraduate engineering”. In France several publications from teaching staff of multiple universities raise questions on “why, what, and how to teach Process Safety”. The Dutch Institution AGS† made a number of recommendeations to counter-act the decline, the German Institution Dechema-ProcessNet released a position paper with recommendations for Education, in France the discussion continues, especially for the content of the study prgramme of the Engineering Schools.Time to investigate if the worries are still valid and what has been done with the recommendations.From a selection European universities, the curricula Chemical Engineering (both BSc and MSc) were examined for the presence of courses ‘Process Safety’. If present, the topics taught within and the time involved (as % ECTS from the total ECTS of the curriculum) were analysed. The analysis shows that the time taken to teach process safety subjects is on average 1.6 % of the total ECTS of the BSc curriculum and 3.4 % for the MSc curriculum. Next, the study searched for key-words in the description of the courses Process Safety. The key-words were categorised to allow a sensible analysis. The gathered data have been clustered into topics, using domains (AGS) and taxonomy (MKOPSC) as a guide. Furthermore, the study reveals that there is no consensus on what subjects to be educated as the ‘absolute minimum’ in curricula Chemical Engineering. Neither in the regular curricula nor in the ‘Advanced MSc’ ones, is a common base found on what to teach as a minimum. A foreseeable consequence of the limited amount of time devoted to Process Safety in regular BSc and MSc curricula, is that the subjects are taught in one or two courses rather than spread evenly over years or semesters. Rather than in one single course, educationalists would prefer to teach engineering and safety courses alternately.Examination of the course contents shows that the subjects taught within process safety courses are well-known, leaving less room to discuss new theories. This is quite acceptable for undergraduate education but for graduate programmes and especially the Advanced MSc, subjects at the forefront of knowledge would be expected. Operating in the forefront of knowledge will originate from research and as pointed out by the Dutch AGS report, a critical mass of research staff is needed to safeguard the development of new knowledge. Alas, the opposite is seen. As the number of students choosing science declines, staff is reduced, chairs are abolished and research effort diminishes accordingly. However, the needs of industry doesn’t decline proportionally. For that reason a plea is made to join forces and build an Advanced MSc programme ‘Process Safety’ taught by a partnership of several universities, with some distribution of safety research in partnership.