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Abstract: The education of safety professionals shows a high variety in their level of approved qualifications, ranging from a technician level up to university master courses, and more recently, doctoral programs. In European countries, it seems that there are some differences in what regards the characteristics of the courses. These may be due to national particularities and legal issues, but also to the nature of the institutions and people ‘behind’ the courses. This paper presents the results of a survey carried out in the scope of an European research project and it aims to provide a basic understanding of the range and diversity of the OHS post-graduation courses. With an estimated average answer rate of 50%, the survey has only included courses with more than 120 teaching hours, from a post-graduation level, and with complete programs. Results are presented for 90 courses, from 18 countries, mainly (84.4%) from universities. It is possible to highlight the fact that, as expected, the majority of the courses (59%) are Masters (or equivalent), and are organised primarily by Engineering, Applied Sciences and Management schools/faculties, which together accounted for nearly 65% of the courses. In what regards the adopted quality systems reported by respondents, there is a predominance (65.8%) of the use of “internal” tools, such as the students and teachers evaluations and internal audits. One of the main conclusions is that there is a large variability amongst the analysed courses. However, it should be emphasised that these results are not representative of the situation all around Europe, as it was not possible to obtain information from all OHS courses. Considering the identified differences within all the European countries, the harmonisation of post-graduation courses on OHS, if it is to occur, has a long way to go. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Several attempts have been made to develop strategies for an effective control of workplace hazards. This paper will focus on the results of a European project called Solbase, which is a databank for solutions to occupational hazards and risks. The Safety Science Group of Delft University of Technology in collaboration with TNO Work and Organisation (formerly NIA-TNO) designed Solbase in a series of projects funded by the Dutch Ministry of Social Affairs and Employment and the European Commission. It consists of the design of and software for a databank with an intelligent navigation system allowing users two principal entry points, which correspond to two basic types of solutions. The first entry point is based on the production process, subdivided into the production principle and production function. This entry point provides the dissemination of solutions within and between branches of industry. The second entry point includes the hazard and its emission and transmission as an access point for more conventional occupational hygiene control measures. With the partners of the consortium, from Spain, Italy, Ireland, Germany, the UK and The Netherlands, 535 new and existing solutions throughout Europe and the world were gathered to test the software and the solutions during a field study. Despite the relatively small number of ‘test solutions’ used, 54% of the search actions in the field study resulted in a useful and suitable solution which the company could actually put into practice. The companies characterized the software as very user friendly. The reproducibility of the coding system for solutions, the classification tree, was satisfactory. Most coders chose the same keywords from the classification tree to describe a corresponding solution. Solbase is a good searching machine for workplace solutions. Especially, the classification of production processes is an inherent guarantee of an exchange of information across the borders of a specific company or branch of industry. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• (Post)graduate education of safety experts gains some interest in the international safety literature. • Publications on the quality of these programs is almost absent. • Main quality indicators are internal, like reactions from trainees, results from examinations. • A better indicator is the transfer of safety knowledge and skills to companies and organizations. Professionalization of safety is gaining some interest in international safety literature, including (post)graduate training and education of safety experts. Different from research, there are hardly any publications and discussions on the quality of (post) graduate safety education in the academic safety literature. This article starts with a short historical picture of safety education. After this picture, a description of the ten (post) graduate safety courses involved is presented with a special reference to the assessment of the quality of these courses. It shows that an internal evaluation of quality, like reactions from trainees, and results from examinations, and tests are presently the main quality indicators. Discussions on how quality assessment can be performed has led to an overview of literature on educational objectives and educational models, and possible options for this assessment. The article concludes that the transfer of safety knowledge and skills to companies and organizations is a highly desirable elaboration of the quality concept. But it is also clear that traditional safety indicators can provide no, or only unreliable, information about the degree of this transfer. An overview of possible minor and major accident scenarios of the company or organisation concerned might be a better option, combined with the activities of the trainee to influence and prevent activation of these scenarios. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]