Engineering Safety Management Systems (SMS) for Industrial Operations

Course Description:

This course delivers a comprehensive engineering treatment of Safety Management Systems for industrial operations, integrating regulatory requirements, systems engineering principles, quantitative risk assessment methodologies, functional safety design, human factors engineering, performance analytics, and governance structures. The program emphasizes that catastrophic industrial events are rarely caused by single-point failures; instead, they arise from interacting technical, human, and organizational weaknesses. Accordingly, the course develops SMS as a cohesive system of interdependent barriers, metrics, and leadership oversight mechanisms.

Learning Objectives:
 

Upon completion of this course, the participant will be able to:

1. Explain the systems engineering principles that underpin an effective Engineering Safety Management System (SMS) and differentiate between compliance-based safety programs and risk-based engineered governance models.
2. Interpret and apply applicable regulatory and consensus standards—including OSHA 29 CFR 1910, OSHA Process Safety Management (29 CFR 1910.119), ISO 45001, ANSI/ASSP Z10, CCPS Risk-Based Process Safety principles, and IEC 61508 / IEC 61511—to the design and operation of industrial SMS frameworks.
3. Develop a structured SMS architecture incorporating leadership accountability, hazard identification, operational controls, management of change, incident investigation, documentation integrity, and continuous improvement mechanisms.
4. Conduct systematic hazard identification using methodologies such as HAZID, HAZOP, What-If analysis, FMEA, Fault Tree Analysis (FTA), and Bow-Tie modeling, and determine when each method is most appropriate.
5. Perform qualitative, semi-quantitative, and quantitative risk assessments, including development of risk matrices, application of Layer of Protection Analysis (LOPA), and interpretation of Quantitative Risk Assessment (QRA) outputs.
6. Define risk tolerability criteria using ALARP principles and corporate risk acceptance thresholds, and apply those criteria to engineering decision-making.
7. Integrate Process Safety Management (PSM) elements into a broader SMS framework, including Process Safety Information (PSI) control, Process Hazard Analysis (PHA) revalidation, mechanical integrity programs, management of change (MOC), and compliance auditing.
8. Evaluate and design engineering controls in accordance with the hierarchy of controls, emphasizing elimination, substitution, and engineered safeguards over administrative measures and PPE.
9. Apply functional safety principles to Safety Instrumented Systems (SIS), including Safety Integrity Level (SIL) determination, Probability of Failure on Demand (PFD) calculations, redundancy architecture selection, proof testing intervals, and lifecycle management.
10. Analyze common cause and common mode failure risks in engineered safeguards and implement strategies to ensure independence and reliability of protective layers.
11. Assess pressure relief systems, passive fire protection, containment strategies, and other non-instrumented engineered safeguards using applicable design standards and worst-case scenario modeling.
12. Incorporate human factors engineering into SMS design by evaluating cognitive workload, situational awareness, alarm management systems, fatigue risk, procedure usability, shift handover integrity, and Human Reliability Analysis (HRA).
13. Diagnose organizational safety culture maturity, identify normalization of deviance, and design reporting systems that enhance psychological safety and near-miss transparency.
14. Develop and implement meaningful leading and lagging safety performance indicators aligned with barrier integrity and high-consequence hazard exposure.
15. Apply statistical process control (SPC) techniques and trend analysis to detect emerging safety degradation signals within industrial operations.
16. Design internal audit programs that evaluate conformance, effectiveness, and barrier performance, and establish corrective action systems with defined accountability and escalation protocols.
17. Conduct executive-level safety performance reviews that integrate KPI analysis, audit findings, risk exposure evaluation, and resource allocation decisions.
18. Apply the Plan-Do-Check-Act (PDCA) continuous improvement cycle to maintain SMS adaptability and prevent organizational drift.
19. Integrate digital monitoring systems and predictive analytics into SMS governance while addressing data integrity, bias mitigation, cybersecurity, and ethical oversight considerations.
20. Evaluate AI-driven predictive safety models by identifying appropriate engineering-based predictive variables, validating model outputs, and ensuring human oversight remains central to risk decision-making.
21. Design structured contractor safety integration frameworks for high-hazard projects, including prequalification risk scoring, SIMOPS risk modeling, leading indicator alignment, joint auditing, and mechanical integrity oversight of contractor-performed work.
22. Develop barrier-based performance dashboards and escalation triggers to ensure early detection of safeguard degradation in both operational and construction environments.
23. Synthesize engineering controls, human factors principles, performance metrics, and leadership governance into a unified, resilient Safety Management System capable of preventing both occupational injuries and catastrophic process events.