Safety education through case study presentations

Abstract

Process safety was introduced into the curriculum of two second year undergraduate subjects in the chemical engineering programs at the University of Melbourne in 2009. As part of the student learning, groups of three to four students were each given a safety case study to investigate and report on to the rest of the class. The case studies include well known process incidents including Bhopal, Buncefield, Longford, Flixborough and Piper Alpha. Also included were incidents drawn from other industries still with valuable lessons to be learnt regarding procedure and failure modes. Each student in the group was expected to talk for 4-5 min on an aspect of the safety incident but within a seamle..