Integrating Risk Concepts into Undergraduate Engineering Courses

The health and safety agenda is becoming increasingly important in engineering education as employers expect graduate engineers to be risk aware and have an appreciation of their professional responsibility for their own safety and the safety of others.

This paper explains the importance of engineers graduating with an understanding of health and safety risk concepts. It describes various approaches to, and the development of materials for, the teaching of risk concepts through an integrated approach within an undergraduate mechanical engineering degree and an e-learning package. Results are also given of an assessment of students’ understanding of risk concepts.