Example Career: Health and Safety Engineers

Career Description

Promote worksite or product safety by applying knowledge of industrial processes, mechanics, chemistry, psychology, and industrial health and safety laws. Includes industrial product safety engineers.

What Job Titles Health and Safety Engineers Might Have

• Product Safety Engineer
• Safety and Health Consultant
• Safety Engineer
• System Safety Engineer

What Health and Safety Engineers Do

• Investigate industrial accidents, injuries, or occupational diseases to determine causes and preventive measures.
• Conduct research to evaluate safety levels for products.
• Evaluate product designs for safety.
• Conduct or coordinate worker training in areas such as safety laws and regulations, hazardous condition monitoring, and use of safety equipment.
• Maintain and apply knowledge of current policies, regulations, and industrial processes.
• Recommend procedures for detection, prevention, and elimination of physical, chemical, or other product hazards.
• Report or review findings from accident investigations, facilities inspections, or environmental testing.
• Evaluate potential health hazards or damage that could occur from product misuse.
• Evaluate adequacy of actions taken to correct health inspection violations.
• Interpret safety regulations for others interested in industrial safety, such as safety engineers, labor representatives, and safety inspectors.
• Review plans and specifications for construction of new machinery or equipment to determine whether all safety requirements have been met.
• Participate in preparation of product usage and precautionary label instructions.
• Interview employers and employees to obtain information about work environments and workplace incidents.
• Provide expert testimony in litigation cases.
• Review employee safety programs to determine their adequacy.
• Conduct or direct testing of air quality, noise, temperature, or radiation levels to verify compliance with health and safety regulations.
• Provide technical advice and guidance to organizations on how to handle health-related problems and make needed changes.
• Develop industry standards of product safety.
• Maintain liaisons with outside organizations, such as fire departments, mutual aid societies, and rescue teams, so that emergency responses can be facilitated.
• Plan and conduct industrial hygiene research.
• Compile, analyze, and interpret statistical data related to occupational illnesses and accidents.
• Write and revise safety regulations and codes.
• Confer with medical professionals to assess health risks and to develop ways to manage health issues and concerns.
• Design and build safety equipment.
• Check floors of plants to ensure that they are strong enough to support heavy machinery.
• Inspect facilities, machinery, or safety equipment to identify and correct potential hazards, and to ensure safety regulation compliance.
• Install safety devices on machinery or direct device installation.

What Health and Safety Engineers Should Be Good At

• Problem Sensitivity - The ability to tell when something is wrong or is likely to go wrong. It does not involve solving the problem, only recognizing there is a problem.
• Oral Comprehension - The ability to listen to and understand information and ideas presented through spoken words and sentences.
• Written Comprehension - The ability to read and understand information and ideas presented in writing.
• Oral Expression - The ability to communicate information and ideas in speaking so others will understand.
• Inductive Reasoning - The ability to combine pieces of information to form general rules or conclusions (includes finding a relationship among seemingly unrelated events).
• Written Expression - The ability to communicate information and ideas in writing so others will understand.
• Deductive Reasoning - The ability to apply general rules to specific problems to produce answers that make sense.
• Near Vision - The ability to see details at close range (within a few feet of the observer).
• Speech Recognition - The ability to identify and understand the speech of another person.
• Speech Clarity - The ability to speak clearly so others can understand you.
• Fluency of Ideas - The ability to come up with a number of ideas about a topic (the number of ideas is important, not their quality, correctness, or creativity).
• Information Ordering - The ability to arrange things or actions in a certain order or pattern according to a specific rule or set of rules (e.g., patterns of numbers, letters, words, pictures, mathematical operations).
• Flexibility of Closure - The ability to identify or detect a known pattern (a figure, object, word, or sound) that is hidden in other distracting material.
• Category Flexibility - The ability to generate or use different sets of rules for combining or grouping things in different ways.
• Mathematical Reasoning - The ability to choose the right mathematical methods or formulas to solve a problem.

What Health and Safety Engineers Should Be Interested In

• Investigative - Investigative occupations frequently involve working with ideas, and require an extensive amount of thinking. These occupations can involve searching for facts and figuring out problems mentally.
• Realistic - Realistic occupations frequently involve work activities that include practical, hands-on problems and solutions. They often deal with plants, animals, and real-world materials like wood, tools, and machinery. Many of the occupations require working outside, and do not involve a lot of paperwork or working closely with others.

What Health and Safety Engineers Need to Learn

• Engineering and Technology - Knowledge of the practical application of engineering science and technology. This includes applying principles, techniques, procedures, and equipment to the design and production of various goods and services.
• English Language - Knowledge of the structure and content of the English language including the meaning and spelling of words, rules of composition, and grammar.
• Public Safety and Security - Knowledge of relevant equipment, policies, procedures, and strategies to promote effective local, state, or national security operations for the protection of people, data, property, and institutions.
• Chemistry - Knowledge of the chemical composition, structure, and properties of substances and of the chemical processes and transformations that they undergo. This includes uses of chemicals and their interactions, danger signs, production techniques, and disposal methods.
• Physics - Knowledge and prediction of physical principles, laws, their interrelationships, and applications to understanding fluid, material, and atmospheric dynamics, and mechanical, electrical, atomic and sub- atomic structures and processes.
• Law and Government - Knowledge of laws, legal codes, court procedures, precedents, government regulations, executive orders, agency rules, and the democratic political process.
• Mathematics - Knowledge of arithmetic, algebra, geometry, calculus, statistics, and their applications.
• Production and Processing - Knowledge of raw materials, production processes, quality control, costs, and other techniques for maximizing the effective manufacture and distribution of goods.
• Education and Training - Knowledge of principles and methods for curriculum and training design, teaching and instruction for individuals and groups, and the measurement of training effects.
• Design - Knowledge of design techniques, tools, and principles involved in production of precision technical plans, blueprints, drawings, and models.
• Mechanical - Knowledge of machines and tools, including their designs, uses, repair, and maintenance.
• Administration and Management - Knowledge of business and management principles involved in strategic planning, resource allocation, human resources modeling, leadership technique, production methods, and coordination of people and resources.
• Computers and Electronics - Knowledge of circuit boards, processors, chips, electronic equipment, and computer hardware and software, including applications and programming.
• Biology - Knowledge of plant and animal organisms, their tissues, cells, functions, interdependencies, and interactions with each other and the environment.
• Psychology - Knowledge of human behavior and performance; individual differences in ability, personality, and interests; learning and motivation; psychological research methods; and the assessment and treatment of behavioral and affective disorders.
• Customer and Personal Service - Knowledge of principles and processes for providing customer and personal services. This includes customer needs assessment, meeting quality standards for services, and evaluation of customer satisfaction.
• Personnel and Human Resources - Knowledge of principles and procedures for personnel recruitment, selection, training, compensation and benefits, labor relations and negotiation, and personnel information systems.