Safety Engineering – (M.Sc.)

The overall aim of the courses is to provide an innovative, high-quality learning opportunity. The courses are particularly aimed at senior engineers and managers and are relevant to a wide range of industries as well as to the regulators, insurance assessors and others who work closely with them.
Neither Safety Engineering nor Decommissioning and Environmental Clean-up are academic subjects that can be taught in isolation from industry. The Department sees the contribution of experts from industry and regulatory bodies as an essential ingredient. In recent years we have welcomed speakers from Alstom, BAE Systems, DASC, the Environment Agency, the Health and Safety Executive, NNC Consulting, Norwich Union Risk Management, the Parliamentary Advisory Committee on Transport Safety, the Rail Safety and Standards Board and Rolls Royce.

We recognise that putting together courses with contributions from such diverse backgrounds risks generating conflicting messages, but this is a reflection of life in industry. The courses aim to provide students with different views of a subject. It is left to the students to learn from this diversity and so acquire a toolbox of techniques to use. There is no intention of saying “this is the right way to do it”.
Another aim of the course is to allow students to learn from each other and from shared activities.

In a cohort of 20 students there are likely to be several who spend their working lives using particular tools or techniques and who know far more about these than do the academic staff. We encourage other students to benefit from this expertise. The MSc uses group activities – team work during the modules, longer group projects between the modules, site visits and evening lectures, often with influential or controversial speakers, to give students the opportunity to widen their horizons in how safety is managed. These activities are an integral part of the course, not optional extras.