The Case for Product Safety Professional Certification

The product safety profession as we know it today can trace its heritage back to the introduction of the Consumer Product Safety Act in 1972, and the establishment of the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission.

The introduction of a full regulatory regime with authority over consumer products placed a new responsibility on industry. There were new rules and regulations that needed to be understood and acted upon. The role of standards was redefined and had a direct link to regulatory compliance. There was a new appreciation by industry that if they did not do an adequate job of developing an effective product safety system, they could face high risk and the possibility of civil penalties for being out of compliance.. Worse, they could be placing consumers at risk through lack of understanding best practices in designing and producing safe products.

Forty five years ago there were no courses at the university-level focusing on general product safety management, although there were courses that brought relevant knowledge in certain areas. Engineering schools taught safety engineering and design engineering. Law schools taught regulatory law. Workshops and conferences have developed over the years and provided instruction into key areas or developments within the regulatory compliance area. Technical training programs have been offered through technical schools and some of the laboratory firms.

In 2009 Saint Louis University in cooperation with ADK Information Services, a consumer product safety information and education development firm, introduced a general management course providing instruction to professionals currently work in the consumer product field. These courses address the full scope of the product safety process beginning with product ideation and design through the different stages of product development, production, distribution and entry into the consumer market through retail channels. Product recalls represent the final stage of management in a system designed to keep unsafe products out of consumer hands.

Since SLU and ADK first introduced “university-level product safety management education” over 200 product safety professionals from more than 100 consumer product firms have attended the university’s product safety management courses.

One of the strong motivations for attending these university-level courses was that students were awarded a certificate for successful completion of the course. The certificate represented a level of professional accomplishment, and was valued by both the individual professional and their company. A group of graduates from the courses taught at Saint Louis University have formed a task force to take the concept of certification one step further: developing a program for individual professional certification as a recognized product safety professional.

What does Professional Certification Mean?

As noted in an article in Wikipedia, certifications are earned from a professional society, university, a certification body, or from a private certifier, for some specific certifications (e.g., Microsoft, Cisco, etc.). Some certifications must be renewed periodically, or may be valid for a specific period of time (e.g., the lifetime of the product upon which the individual is certified). As a part of a complete renewal of an individual's certification, it is common for the individual to show evidence of continued learning—through a recognized process defined by the certifying group.

Many certification programs are created, sponsored, or affiliated with professional associations, trade organizations, or private vendors interested in raising standards. Many of those programs completely independent from membership organizations enjoy association support and endorsement.

The growth of certification programs is also a reaction to the changing employment market. Certifications are portable, since they do not depend on one company's definition of a certain job. Certification stands out on the resume and the professional reference by being an impartial, third-party endorsement of an individual's professional knowledge and experience.

Certifications are usually earned from a professional society or educational institute, not the government. However, a government agency can decree a certification is required by law for a person to be allowed to perform a task or job. Certification is different from professional licensure. In the United States, professional licenses are usually issued by state agencies, having as a requirement the university title for that profession. In other countries, licensing is granted by the professional society or college, but you need to certificate after some years (usually three to five) and so on thereafter. The certification assessment process, for some organizations, is very similar or even the same as licensure and may differ only in terms of legal status, while in other organizations, can be quite different and more comprehensive than that of licensure.

The American National Standards Institute (ANSI), Standard 1100, defines the requirements of meeting the ANSI standard for being a certifying organization. According to ANSI Standard 1100, a professional certifying organization must meet two requirements:

• Deliver an assessment based on industry knowledge, independent from training courses or course providers.
• Grant a time-limited credential to anyone who meets the assessment standards.

Within the product safety field, there are a number of examples of professional certification, including quality, engineering, chemistry, and toxicology. These are all specialists in specific skill areas. What has been missing is a designation that a product safety professional has mastered the basic knowledge required to demonstrate competence in understanding product safety as a process within a company that draws from many different disciplines.

This is the area that has attracted the interested of some product safety professionals.

The Board of Certified Safety Professionals is a group that comes within the general range of offering relevant certification to the consumer product safety professional. However, BCSP’s areas of concentration are in the construction, safety, health and environmental fields and do not address the safety of specific categories of products.

Professional certification may be one of the next new horizons that captures attention and support of the consumer product safety profession, as well as their companies seeking some standard measurements by which to judge employee competence and merit. We shall see how much interest this new area builds in the next several years.

This article first appeared in the 2017 edition of the ADK Product Safety & Recall Directory.