PROCESS SAFETY EDUCATION AND TRAINING ACADEMIC EDUCATION AS A FOUNDATION FOR OTHER PROCESS SAFETY INITIATIVES ON EDUCATION

Commitment to process safety is fundamental to the process industry. Governance, promotion and participation in academic and related educational programs are an expression of the industries’ commitment and stakeholder reach. Process safety education and training is a very broad topic. Industry-academic collaboration is essential when developing high level education and training on process safety. This article looks at the development of educational and training programs for Master students, for Master after Master programs and for experienced industry workers.

Within essenscia, Delta Process Academy is a platform governing three initiatives in close collaboration with our important stakeholders. First, together with the Department of Chemical Engineering of the Catholic University of Leuven, it funds and coordinates an Advanced Master of Safety Engineering , elements of which are part of the regular Master programme in Chemical Engineering. Secondly, two intensive process safety programs have been developed. The first is aimed at experienced engineers and the second at new Master students from Europe, in the framework of the Athens Education network. Furthermore, it has set up a platform to share experience on process safety.

The importance of process safety needs to be stressed on a continuous basis. Our concerns are based on the human and financial consequences of neglecting process safety. Education, training and sharing good practices on process safety are an essential cornerstone of a commitment to process safety and the prevention of incidents.

A major challenge is how to integrate process safety into the regular educational Master programs (Level 1) versus the creation of additional Advanced Master programs (Level 2). The latter is applicable when training experienced people from the industry; the former only applies to graduating students.
Short generic or specific courses of one week duration can be categorized as an additional level (Level 3) and very specialised one or two day courses form the last level (Level 4). The final level is training only focusing on sharing experience (Level 5).

Of course there are levels in between and content overlaps between the levels. The higher levels are characterized by increased participation from industry and consultants as content or subject-matter providers.