[cycl0ne]

I just got a job offer for process safety engineer role. This UK company mainly deals with domestic oil and gas companies. From my interview work will involve things like fire and explosion modelling, dispersion modelling, and quantitative risk assessments for major accidents etc

Wanted to ask the rooshv community what career progression is like in this field? Especially since my starting salary is particularly low. Also will it be easy to switch to other fields that involve more design work or engineering management consultancy.

[Grodin]

It seems like it would be a good potential foot in the door for a management track, but whether you get through that door depends on your aptitudes. I know that where I work, which is oil and gas, there is an enormous focus on safety and a lot of the upper project management comes from a safety background or has 'safety culture' as a large focus of their job duties.

[scotian]

Being a safety position, about 95% of people on site will hate you so get used to eating your lunch alone and having nasty signs with cock and balls taped to your back. If you can tough it out for a few years, senior safety positions are pretty easy and highly paid but its mostly a token position, for liability reasons, these oil companies need a safety program, but most people don't give a shit about it and even at a management level, no one will respect you and your peers will despise you.

[evilhei]

True that whats said in post above, Ive never seen safety guy whos being taken seriously.

[Phoenix]

I think what he's talking about is more 'functional safety' than "ok guys, no using Stanley knifes that don't autoretract anymore mmkayyy?" safety.

I know in Australia that functional safety can pay very well. Equipment and systems fucking up can cost enormous money in capital intensive industries, and they're happy to throw money at preventing that happening.

[scotian]

If you're going to go the safety route then it helps if you have some experience "on the tools" as in, you actually have a clue what you're talkign about when you tell tradesmen what not to do. So I would recommend working in a different job for a few years, you may even like it more, before moving onto safety. I have a lot more respect for a safety dick who has a journeyman welders ticket over some 20 year girl with a clip board walking around with checking off a checklist but has no idea how to do my job.

[cycl0ne]

I think the role is along the line of what Phoenix is talking about. So my what I gathered they take a look at new developments to carry out the relevant safety, business and environment assessment (inherently safe designs, noise, fire risk etc). However if it isn't then I'll leave with some experience under my belt (first full-time job). My hope in 2-3 years time is to get more "in-depth" experience with a role like process design to further diversify my skill set or join a big company like BP or Shell as a chemical (process) engineer.

But I find it hilarious that safety guys are getting so much stick lol.

[Phoenix]

Yeah no-one likes the safety guy. The problem is that he's got a 9 to 5 job too, and there are only so many 'safety things' for him to do. So to justify his existence and his salary, he has to come up with various irritating bullshit that nobody respects, because they don't believe those things are actually necessary or pursuant to their safety. Tradesmen don't respect some nobody treating them like children with no common sense.

Functional safety is kind of like "engineering insurance", i.e. reducing the odds and potential damage of designs blowing up by rigorously analyzing edge cases, incorporating redundancy and comprehensive fault detection and warnings etc. Lot of dudes get killed every year by machine faults that no-one foresees. Even things like anesthesia used to be dangerous operations until they made a real effort to make the equipment more fail-safe.