Summary in English

A brief summary of the HVK-study (Safety Engineering)

What is the meaning of this study by PHOV (Institute for Post Higher Education in Safety & Health)?
It is a post higher professional study with a good mix of self-tuition and practice. Education by leading specialists and execution of instructions in your own working environment.

Process safety and occupational safety and health together in one study: that’s the way to develop a profound and at the same time broad vision on safety.

After 2 years of study the student is able to give a valuable and sound advice on safety, thanks to the integrated approach of PHOV.

What can you do with a HVK certificate?

• Accompany organizations to a working safety and occupational management system.
• Advise in (occupational) safety during the development process.
• Apply occupational and safety requirements.
• Execute audits.
• Accompany (building) projects.

One becomes a professional consultant on safety matters and an expert in risk management, in the coherence of technique, organization, culture and behavior.
It gives a person a clear surplus value in organizations and in a society where the importance of safety and risk management only increases.

Contents of the study

The study is made up of a basic program followed by a Specialization Higher Safety. During the basic program lessons are given together with future (labour)hygienists.

Laws and regulations

• Introduction in safety and hygiene
• Occupational health and safety legislation and adjacent legislation
• Liability
• Environmental legislation
• Statistics.

Consultancy skills
In this module the inventory and further development of own competences are dealt with. These competences are used to influence organizations on various levels to bring them on a higher occupational health and safety level. Particular attention is paid on how to handle resistance.
The module does not only contain lessons, but also a peer review process over a longer period which is accompanied by PHOV.
Subjects are:

• Competences
• View on personal profile
• Core quadrants
• Dimensions of task and role of the safety expert
• Safety expert in the consultancy process
• Personal professional development.

General occupational health, safety and hygiene

In this module a general base of knowledge on safety and occupational hygiene is taught. Subjects are:

• General safety and occupational hygiene
• Biological factors
• Ideas as: chemistry and hazardous substances; classifications like: WMS, ADR, GHS
• Ground- and asbestos sanitation
• Construction safety
• Machine safety and product safety
• Indoor climate
• Physical load/ergonomics
• Fire/Emergency response.

Risk inventory and evaluation (RI&E)
This module deals with the ins and outs of risk inventories. Process steps learn us how a RI&E can be executed and different sorts of RI&E’s are being treated.
Subjects are:

• Introduction to RI&E and RI&E-process steps
• The importance of organizational culture in tackling the RI&E
• Deepening in the RI&E’s
• Psychosocial occupational stress (PSA) and RI&E on working level
• From RI&E to risk management and control measures
• RI&E in practice
• Testing of RI&E’s.

Influential skills
To influence organizations with your own competences in such a way that actually something is done with the given advice and organizations are brought on a higher (occupational) level.

• The role of the consultant and match with the organization
• To influence organizations.

Riskmanagementsystems
This module deals with the management and control of occupational health and safety conditions by means of an occupational health & safety management system (AMS). The role of the safety expert in this depends on a great number of factors such as personal knowledge and proficiency of the safety expert, the phase of development of the company and the connection with other developments in the company.
Subjects are:

• View on organizational structures and cultures; profiles of organizations
• General survey of various aspects of management systems and differences in structures and cultural phases with companies
• Construction of ISO 45001 and integration of management systems
• Implementation of an AMS/audit to be certified
• The Swiss cheese model and the part of the human error; change management and aspects of integration
• Expansion of occupational health and safety systems.

Learning from incidents and accidents
In this module we will go into:

• Background of accident models
• Definitions and kinds of accidents
• The launch of a procedure for the announcement of accidents
• Factfinding by performing accident investigation to arrive at a good reconstruction of the incident
• Analysis of accidents to be able to define the causes and consequent causes of the incident. A number of accident analysis methods are presented
• The difference between occupational accidents and accidents in the chemical industry.

Safety
This module expands on different safety-related subjects.

• Fire/emergency response
• Electrical safety
• Safety of machines and working tools
• Security and social safety
• Construction safety (including working on heights and in enclosed spaces) and Safety & Health plans and functions of coordinators, labour permits.

At the same time attention is being paid to the storage of hazardous substances according to PGS15 and explosion safety in which the working with ATEX is being taught.

Process safety
This module addresses the identification, the quantification and the control of risks of installations with hazardous substances. Both for the design phase and the users phase.
Various parts of a risk analysis are being explained:

• the identification of dangerous situations by means of the HAZOP technique
• the calculation of the chance on appearance and escalation of accident scenario’s by means of techniques as fault trees and occurrence trees
• the assurance of safety in the design phase of technical installations
• the SIL classification: the definition of the necessary risk reduction by securities
• the analysis of the human role (human failure)
• the calculation of the actual effects and the damage done by release of a hazardous substance
• the calculation and presentation of risks: Local risk (PR) and Group risk (GR).

Thesis
For the thesis one has to execute a practice instruction by preference in one’s own company or with a big customer.
The instruction deals most of the time with an actual health & safety problem. Both the company and the student benefit from the thesis and in this way it takes relatively less time.
During the working out of the thesis, one is accompanied by an expert mentor.