Changing paradigms for professional engineering practice towards safe design—an Australian perspective Y. Toft a, *, P. Howard b , D. Jorgensen b a School of Health and Human Performance, Building 77, Faculty of Arts, Health and Sciences, Central Queensland University, North Rockhampton, Queensland 4702, Australia b Faculty of Engineering and Physical Systems, Central Queensland University, Queensland, Australia Abstract Engineers have a duty of care to end users of the systems they design under current statutes and at common law. Considerations such as cognitive compatibility and usability of equip- ment and system design are becoming issues of increasing importance, as society becomes more reliant on information technology and automation. That engineers contribute to human error in these systems through latent design error and poor management decision-making is well documented. Therefore, the role of engineers can be considered integral to positive out- comes in workplace safety. This research offers an opportunity to understand why engineering design work may be contributing to human error on part of the operator, and offers hope toward a future when engineers will embrace safe design principles. This cross sectional study examines the rela- tionship between professional engineering education and ergonomics. This research specifi- cally addresses the attitudes of engineers to the inclusion of ergonomic principles in engineering practice and in undergraduate engineering curriculum. It was found that the surveyed members of the Australasian Association for Engineering Education (AAEE) had a positive attitude toward the inclusion of ergonomic principles in their design practice. The intensity of their attitude was more positive if they had some pre- vious exposure to ergonomic training. At present few engineering faculties systematically include ergonomic principles in their design courses. The most encouraging finding was the Safety Science 41 (2003) 263–276 www.elsevier.com/locate/ssci 0925-7535/02/$ - see front matter # 2002 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved. PII: S0925-7535(02)00006-1 * Corresponding author. Tel.: +61-7-4930-9068; fax: +61-7-4930-9871. E-mail addresses: y.toft@cqu.edu.au (Y. Toft), p.howard@cqu.edu.au (P. Howard), d.jorgensen@ cqu.edu.au (J.. Jorgensen).