Safety and Professional Practice
What this domain tests
Safety and Professional Practice tests risk control, legal duties, workshop and electrical safety, fire response, environmental responsibility and ethical conduct.
Core rules
- Risk assessment: identify hazards, decide who may be harmed and how, evaluate risk (likelihood × severity), record controls, review. Controls follow the hierarchy: eliminate, substitute, engineering controls, administrative controls, then PPE last.
- Machine safety: guards prevent access to nip points; interlocks stop the machine when a guard opens; lockout/tagout isolates energy before maintenance.
- Electrical safety: isolate, prove dead, lock off, and earth. RCDs detect earth leakage; fuses and MCBs protect cables. Portable equipment needs inspection and testing.
- Fire: the fire triangle needs fuel, oxygen and heat. Class A (solids) uses water; Class B (flammable liquids) uses foam or CO₂; Class C (gases) requires isolation; electrical fires use CO₂ or dry powder, never water.
- Chemicals: obtain the safety data sheet, use local exhaust ventilation, store correctly, and dispose of waste lawfully.
- Professional conduct: competence, honesty, confidentiality, avoiding conflicts of interest, reporting unsafe practice.
Worked example
A task has a likelihood score of 4 and a severity score of 5, giving a risk rating of 20 (high). Replacing the hazardous solvent with a water-based cleaner removes the hazard (elimination). If that is not possible, enclosing the process and adding extraction might reduce likelihood to 2 and severity to 2, giving 4 (low). PPE alone would not change likelihood much and is the last resort.
Traps
Starting with PPE; treating a risk assessment as a one-off paperwork exercise; using water on an electrical or oil fire; assuming a guard without an interlock is adequate; failing to review controls after a change; ignoring environmental disposal rules.