Glossary
Safety Engineer Terms & Vocabulary
15 essential safety engineer terms with plain-English definitions: the vocabulary you’ll hear in training and on day one.
Key safety engineer vocabulary
These 15 terms come up constantly in safety engineer training, on the job and in interviews. Knowing them helps you follow instructions, document accurately and sound prepared.
- Combustible dust
- Fine particles that can explode when dispersed and ignited.
- Engineering controls
- Physical changes that reduce hazards, such as guards or ventilation.
- FMEA
- Failure modes and effects analysis.
- HAZOP
- Hazard and operability study: a structured review of process deviations.
- Inherently safer design
- Designing hazards out instead of controlling them.
- Layer of protection analysis (LOPA)
- A method to evaluate safeguards against risks.
- Machine guarding
- Barriers that protect workers from moving parts.
- Management of change (MOC)
- A process to review changes for hazards.
- NFPA codes
- Fire and life safety codes from the National Fire Protection Association.
- Process hazard analysis (PHA)
- A systematic review of process hazards.
- PSM
- OSHA’s Process Safety Management standard for highly hazardous chemicals.
- Relief valve
- A device that releases pressure to prevent ruptures.
- Risk matrix
- A tool to rank risks by severity and likelihood.
- Root cause analysis
- Finding the underlying causes of an incident.
- Safety instrumented system (SIS)
- Automated systems that bring processes to a safe state.
Practice these terms
Test yourself with the free Safety Engineer practice test: it includes vocabulary questions built from this list. For a complete course, see Safety Engineer training.
Browse terms from every career in our career glossary.