Risk and safety management professional (degree)

Risk and Safety Management Professional: In highly regulated industries where the impact of loss is high, risk and safety management professionals work collaboratively with other disciplines. They establish the context of the problem, identify all hazards including those with the potential to cause a major accident, analyse the associated risk, evaluate the risk against acceptance criteria and propose ways of treating the risk such that it is eliminated or reduced and maintained as low as reasonably practicable. They are required to address means of monitoring and reviewing the actual risk and safety performance, and communicating and consulting risk issues with all relevant stakeholders.

Whilst the emphasis on specific aspects of the risk profile and use of specific techniques may differ slightly between industries, the overriding risk management process is the same for all. Whether practitioners work in ‘systems’ sectors such as nuclear, defence, rail and aviation, for example, or in ‘process’ industries such as oil and gas, petrochemical and chemical, the risk management processes, safety management systems, and organisational and human factors are all fundamentally the same.

This apprenticeship creates rounded professionals capable of working competently in their chosen industry but with the risk and safety management knowledge, skills and behaviours that are transferable across all highly regulated industries.

Such professionals typically work in the fields of technical safety, safety and reliability, nuclear safety, chemical and process safety, rail safety, product safety and air safety.