The module covers the key aspects of health, safety and environmental management that future managers, engineers will need to know and find useful in their future lives and careers. The course and material is pragmatic as well as academic in nature. It will impart a basic understanding of engineering ethics: the legal and moral responsibility that comes with being an engineering professional, to your employer, to public safety, and to the environment.

To provide the knowledge and skills necessary to undertake health and safety related activities, such as writing policies, assessing risks and investigating accidents in their chosen occupations. To provide an understanding of the socio-environmental impacts, both positive and negative that the construction industry may have on society.

This module is designed to raise your awareness of your future responsibilities to society as a professional engineer. It aims to equip you with a working understanding of non-technical issues such as social responsibility, health and safety and sustainability.

On successful completion of this module you should be able to:

Module Specific Skills and Knowledge

Personal and Key Transferable / Employment Skills and Knowledge

- Introduction to accident prevention and health and safety in industry; terminology; reason for preventing accidents; moral, cost, legal; accident statistics and trends in industry;

- Accident aetiology: basic theories of accident causation, the role of human error in accidents, concept of active and latent failures; strategies for reducing human error;

- Health and safety management: introduction, systems approach, key elements of a health and safety management system, recent developments, practical aspects of health and safety management;

- Risk assessment and management: concept of risk assessment, subjective and quantitative risk assessment, organising for risk assessment and developing a risk management strategy;

- Health assessment and surveillance: health risks, health risk management, health surveillance programmes;

- Accident and incident investigations: need to investigation accidents, accident triangles, accident reporting, key elements of accident investigation;

- Safety culture and maturity: definitions, safety culture maturity models.
- Health and safety responsibilities and ethics

- Health and safety regulations – HASAWA, COSHH etc.
- Environmental impact assessments including screening and scoping for EIA; risk management;
- Environmental management systems (ISO 14000 series), including drivers, benefits and advantages of; case studies;
- Environmental standards, surveys, licences etc; environmental permitting; monitoring and auditing;
- Climate change and adaptation in the construction industry;

- Energy balance, lifecycle costing and environmental impact

- Globalisation and effects of lowest-cost production in third world countries

- Climate change and emerging policy questions

- Disaster relief

- State, company and individual contributions and responsibilities

- Equal opportunities

If a module is normally assessed entirely by coursework, all referred/deferred assessments will normally be by assignment.

If a module is normally assessed by examination or examination plus coursework, referred and deferred assessment will normally be by examination. For referrals, only the examination will count, a mark of 40% being awarded if the examination is passed. For deferrals, candidates will be awarded the higher of the deferred examination mark or the deferred examination mark combined with the original coursework mark.

Basic reading:

ELE: http://vle.exeter.ac.uk/

Web based and Electronic Resources:

Other Resources:

Reading list for this module: