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Hygienic Design Training

Food engineering . Equipment . Buildings

Online Hygienic Design Training for Food Manufacturing

Most food safety training tells you to clean better. This tells you why the machine cannot be cleaned at all, and what to write on the drawing so the next one can. It is a technical course series for the people who specify, buy, install, maintain, clean and audit food equipment: radii, slopes, dead legs, welds, steel grades, drains, air and the evidence gates in a purchase path. Designed with industry leading engineers and technical food safety consultants.

Online & Self-Paced
Narrated Video & Original Engineering Diagrams
QR Verifiable Certificate
Working Tools Included
Equipment Materials Buildings & services Purchase specification

The series

Our hygienic design courses

Three levels, built to be taken in order. Essentials teaches you to see the fault and name the rule it breaks. Intermediate takes you into the engineering: steel grades and corrosion, pipework and CIP, conveyors and open equipment, floors, drains, air and the building itself. Advanced, covering validation, verification and design review at scale, is in development.

Prices are in South African rand and shown in US dollars and euros on each course page for international buyers. No discounts are offered on this series.

The idea

What hygienic design actually is

Hygienic design is the practice of building food equipment and food factories so that they can be cleaned, and so that there is nowhere for soil, water or microorganisms to sit. It is decided on a drawing, long before anybody chooses a chemical. A one millimetre internal corner, a blanked branch left on a pipe, a hollow frame tube with a drilled hole in it: each is a place the cleaning solution shears past instead of entering, and no amount of caustic, temperature or scrubbing reaches inside.

That is why a swab can pass on the flat surface beside a corner that is still soiled, and why the same line fails the same test every year while the hygiene team is blamed for it. The fault is geometry. Once you can see it and name the rule it breaks, you stop arguing about cleaning chemicals and start arguing about specifications, which is an argument you can win.

Who it is for

Built for the people who decide what gets installed

Quality and Food Safety Managers

You sign off corrective actions on findings that cleaning cannot fix. This gives you the rule number and the drawing to change.

Engineering and Maintenance Managers

Specify radii, slopes, welds, finishes and clearances before the steel is cut, and reject a quote on hollow sections and drilled holes alone.

Project and Process Engineers

Take a line from user requirement specification to commissioning with hygienic design evidence at every gate.

Procurement and Technical Buyers

Ask suppliers for the three documents that matter at order, when you still have leverage, rather than at delivery when you have none.

Hygiene and Cleaning Managers

Prove which findings are design faults, and cost them in water, overtime and delayed starts so the capital request writes itself.

Auditors and Consultants

Raise findings that hold, against the right document, in the right words, at the right clause.

Equipment Suppliers and Fabricators

Understand what your food customers are about to start asking for, and build it in before they do.

Graduates and Career Changers

Every activity works on the built in case study, so you can complete the course and the assignment without a site of your own.

What you learn

From spotting the fault to writing the specification

  Essentials, 5 hours Intermediate, 9 hours
Starting point No engineering background needed Essentials, or equivalent experience
Equipment The ten rules, and the three areas of any machine Pipework, welds, valves, tanks, CIP, conveyors, chutes, drives and cabinets
Materials Where 304 stops and 316 starts Grades, chlorides, temperature, four corrosion mechanisms, surface finish, elastomers and seals
Buildings Floors, drains, walls, ceilings, doors and lighting Drain profile, fall and tested capacity, the envelope, air, pressure, condensation, utilities and building work in a running plant
You leave with A thirty point hygienic design walk, scored, with job cards A scored hygienic design risk register with owners, dates and costs
Assessment Knowledge checks, games and a proctored final Knowledge checks, games, a proctored final and a workplace assignment

The tools

You leave with something you can use on Monday

Both courses carry a working tool, built by ASC, that runs in your browser and exports a spreadsheet. They are the reason delegates tell us the course paid for itself in the first month.

The Hygienic Design Walk

Thirty scored points across a line or a room, with two override flags, photographs and job cards, exported to a spreadsheet you can hand to engineering. Included with Essentials.

The Hygienic Design Risk Register

Every finding scored on severity, likelihood and exposure, banded, with an interim control, a permanent fix, an owner and a date. Included with Intermediate, and it is the course assignment.

Where it fits

Your food safety management system, and the law

In South Africa, R638 regulation 7 requires food contact surfaces to be smooth, rust proof, non toxic and non absorbent, and free of open joints or seams. That is a design requirement, not a cleaning one, and no cleaning programme can deliver it on the wrong equipment.

In a certified site, hygienic design sits inside your prerequisite programmes, your maintenance and change control, and your equipment purchase process, which is where the GFSI benchmarked schemes look for it. The courses teach you to name the document behind every figure you specify, and to notice when a number in common use comes from guidance rather than from the standard being quoted at you. That habit alone changes how supplier conversations go.

Answers, fast

Frequently asked questions

Do I need an engineering background?
No. Essentials assumes no engineering training at all and teaches the rules through drawings and photographs of real faults. Intermediate goes deeper into materials, pipework and building services, and assumes you have done Essentials or already work with equipment. Neither course asks you to do any calculation beyond dividing one measurement by another.
Which course should I start with?
Start with Essentials unless you already specify or install equipment for a living. It is the course that teaches you to see the fault and name the rule, and Intermediate builds directly on it. If you are an engineer already comfortable with radii, slopes and dead legs, you can start at Intermediate.
Is this recognised by FSSC 22000, BRCGS or the other schemes?
Hygienic design is not a standard of its own. It sits inside your prerequisite programmes, maintenance, change control and equipment purchase requirements, which is where auditors look for it. The courses quote the relevant clauses and, just as importantly, teach you which commonly used figures come from guidance rather than from the standard, so you cite the right document.
Can I do this without a factory to practise on?
Yes. Every activity, tool and assignment works on the built in case studies, which are training scenarios built from real audit patterns, so an unemployed or newly qualified delegate can complete the whole course and earn the certificate.
How long do I have, and is it self-paced?
Both courses are online and self-paced. Essentials is five hours of content and Intermediate is nine, and you work through them in your own time, on a phone or a computer. Every lesson can be read or listened to.
What does the certificate look like?
An ASC Certificate of Achievement carrying your name, the course, the level and a verification code with a QR code, so an employer or auditor can confirm it is genuine on our website rather than taking a printed sheet on trust. You need seventy percent to pass every assessment, and the final assessment is video proctored.
Do you offer a discount or a group price?
There are no discounts on the hygienic design series. It is a technical course built with engineers and it is priced accordingly. For several seats from one company, contact us and we will deal with it directly.
I am outside South Africa. Can I still enrol?
Yes. The engineering content is international, the guidance documents referenced are international, and each course page shows the price in US dollars and euros beside the rand. Only the legal section is South African, and it is clearly marked as such.

Stop paying for the same fault every night

One badly designed line costs water, chemical, overtime and delayed starts for as long as it runs. Five hours of training is the cheapest thing you will do about it.