Water Safety Planning Course

Course overview

This intermediate level of training covers aspects of water quality in the clean water supply system to provide individuals with the knowledge and expertise in ensuring safe drinking water for end users, in line with WHO guidance and BS EN 15975-2 for Water Safety Planning. Upon course completion, delegates will be able to:

• Explain how a Water Safety Plan team should effectively describe the water supply system and its hazards
• Monitor for, assess the effectiveness of, evaluate risks for, and plan for improved hazard control measures
• Implement methods to verify the effectiveness of, strengthen procedures for, and review a Water Safety Plan
• Recommend innovations to support and improve Water Safety Plans

Who can benefit?

As an advancement to the Ensuring Drinking Water Quality course, delegates may include those seeking to deepen their understanding of impacts on water quality for potable supply and apply these in the implementation of a Water Safety Plan. For example, water network operators, technicians, engineers and supervisors. 

Participants may also be drawn from any area of business or service where an intermediate knowledge level of drinking water quality is required for effective decision making. For example, engineering consultants and water quality or microbiology consultants in the area of drinking water supply.

Training outline

The course is interactive, with a mix of lecture, group discussion, and exercises to facilitate an engaging learner experience. An end-of course multiple choice assessment effectively demonstrates knowledge transfer.

• Assembling a Water Safety Planning Team: what is needed to establish a team to lead the development and ongoing implementation of the WSP.
  
• Describing the System: how to provide an accurate and concise description of the entire water supply so that the associated risks can be assessed and managed.
• Identifying Hazards and Hazardous Events: identify the potential risks to the water supply, in terms of what, where and how they could compromise the delivery of safe drinking water. 
  
• Validating Control Measures and Assessing risk: assess the effectiveness of current control measures and evaluate water supply risks to prioritise necessary actions.
• Planning for Improvement: develop a step-by-step improvement plan for implementing new or reinforced control measures, aiming to mitigate risks to an acceptable level. 
• Monitoring Control Measures: define and implement an operational monitoring plan that determines whether the water supply's control measures are operating as intended. 
• Verifying Effectiveness of WSP: understand how the WSP, as a whole, can be verified to be working effectively.
• Strengthening Management Procedures: determine which documented procedures should be followed during normal or incident conditions, or emergency situations.
  
• Supporting WSP Programmes: establish how effective implementation of water safety planning can be supported. 
• Reviewing and Updating the WSP: ensuring the WSP is up to date and reflect lessons learned from WSP operational experiences.