North-east safety firm helps to bridge gap between academia and industry

Aberdeenshire headquarted process safety firm, Salus Technical, have teamed up with a number of universities to provide the next generation of engineers the opportunity to work with real-life industry software.

Salus Technical MD and Founder, David Jamieson, has offered the company’s new risk assessment software solution – Bowtie Master – free-of-charge to university students of degrees related to Process Safety, such as Chemical and Process Safety Engineering. Aimed at enhancing and streamlining the risk assessment process across a range of sectors, Bowtie Master will give these students the opportunity to experience pioneering industry-relevant software as part of their studies.

The University of Edinburgh has accepted the offer for their students, and asked David Jamieson to carry out a lecture for undergraduate students on their Chemical Engineering degree course.  David’s contribution will form part of a module on ‘Advanced Process Safety’. David is currently in discussions with a number of universities across the UK, several of whom are keen to use the software with their students.

David developed Bowtie Master following an extensive career working in-house for major operators and service providers. He explains how the software will support the students’ learning: “Bowtie diagrams are an excellent training tool to help understand our risks, the management of our barriers and what can make them fail. A cloud-based application, Bowtie Master facilitates the building and sharing of these bowtie diagrams, offering unprecedented capabilities to design, collaborate on and share these diagrams across disciplines and organisations. The students will enjoy exposure to this cutting-edge industry software, as well as learning about the fundamentals of bowtie diagrams. What’s more, with most University students working and learning from home at the moment, our cloud-based application can be used on their laptops, without the need to install any software.

“I know from my own experience, I didn’t encounter any real-life, industry software programmes until I was actually working, so this will be a huge boost to the students’ future career prospects. Here at Salus Technical we are absolutely passionate about supporting the training and development of the next generation of engineers, and we look forward to working with the universities going forward.”

As well as oil and gas, Bowtie Master can be used across a wide range of major hazard industries including aerospace, rail, construction and cyber security. David adds: “We describe Bowtie Master as a lens through which to understand, visualise and communicate risk. Supporting the next generation of engineers is part of a wider drive towards increasing the safety competencies of individuals, teams and organisations.”

This article originally appeared in the Scotsman on 22nd February 2021: https://www.scotsman.com/business/edinburgh-university-engineering-students-to-work-with-cutting-edge-industry-software-3139865