Hygienic design training · Series FS32 · Levels 1 to 3
Hygienic design training: your line is not dirty, it is impossible to clean
There is a machine on your floor that fails the same swab every year. The team is not the problem and the chemical is not the problem. A one millimetre corner, a blanked branch and a hollow frame tube are the problem, and they were decided on a drawing before anyone bought the caustic. That is where Listeria survives in a niche no brush reaches, building the biofilm that shrugs off a clean, and it is why the same harbourage site keeps coming back on the environmental swab year after year. This series teaches you to find them, name the rule they break, and write the specification that stops the next one arriving.
Written by the ASC Team against EHEDG Guideline 8, fourth edition, December 2025, and the EHEDG detail guidelines it delegates to, with EN 1672-2 and ISO 14159 for machinery hygiene, 3-A Sanitary Standards practice, and R638 regulation 6 for South Africa. ASC is not an EHEDG authorised training provider and these courses are not certified or endorsed by EHEDG or by 3-A Sanitary Standards Inc.
Worked line by line in Advanced module 1. Machine with EHEDG certified components R6.1 million, local fabrication R2.9 million. The line is cleaned in three and a half hours by four people, which is fourteen person hours, and a thirty eight percent saving on that clean is 5.3 of them a night, or about 1 526 person hours a year. The thirty eight percent is the average cleaning saving reported by the AINIA demonstration project and adopted as a Best Available Technique in the European reference document for food, drink and milk. It is a project average across the equipment that project tested, not a promise for any one machine, and the course teaches you to write it into the paper as an assumption you will measure at the performance qualification. On labour alone the premium breaks even only above a fully loaded rate of about R105 an hour, straight line over twenty years and undiscounted. Discount it at any realistic cost of capital and that break even rate rises to between R210 and R280 an hour. The course teaches you to say that out loud, then to build the case properly with water, chemical, effluent, lost line hours and risk, and to show it discounted. A financial director who is handed labour alone will reject it in the first minute, and the delegate who handed it over loses the next request as well.
The short answer
What is hygienic design training, and who needs it?
Hygienic design, called sanitary design in North America, is the practice of designing food equipment, pipework and buildings so that soil, water and microorganisms cannot get in, cannot collect and cannot survive cleaning. It is a design control, not a cleaning control. Hygienic design training teaches food industry professionals to identify design faults on installed equipment, quote the rule and the source document each fault breaks, and write those requirements into a purchase specification before equipment is built.
ASC runs the series online and self-paced, so delegates enrol from South Africa, the wider African continent, the Gulf states, Europe, the United Kingdom, Australia, India and North America. The engineering content and the reference documents are international, drawn from EHEDG and 3-A practice. The one South African section, regulation R638, is clearly marked so delegates elsewhere can map it to their own law.
The series
Three levels, taken in order, plus a companion course for trades teams
Essentials teaches you to see the fault and name the rule. Intermediate takes you into the engineering behind it. Advanced puts you in charge of it: the business case, scored risk assessment, specification and supplier control, verification and commissioning, and a capstone brownfield project. For fitters, artisans and engineering managers there is also a companion course, Food Safety for Engineering and Maintenance Teams, which applies the same rules to maintenance work.
Hygienic Design Essentials
- Where microorganisms live on a machine, and why cleaning cannot follow them
- The ten rules with the real numbers
- Conveyors, tanks, pipes, valves, floors, drains and the building
- A thirty point walk you run on your own line the week you finish
Intermediate Hygienic Design
- Steel grades, the four ways the passive layer fails, surface finish and elastomers
- Pipework, welds, valves, tanks and clean in place (CIP) verification at the return
- Conveyors and open equipment, stripped into six scored points
- Floors, drains, air, condensation and building work in a running plant
Advanced Hygienic Design and Engineering
- The budget case, the real cost of poor design, and getting a specification signed
- A scored hygienic design risk assessment you can defend in front of an auditor
- Specifying and buying equipment, reading an EHEDG certificate, holding the supplier to it
- Verification, commissioning and a capstone on a R28 million brownfield upgrade
Hygienic Design Pathway
- Hygienic Design Essentials, the ten rules and the thirty point walk
- Intermediate Hygienic Design, materials, pipework and the building
- Food Safety for Engineering and Maintenance Teams, the same rules applied to repairs
- Advanced is bought separately, so the pathway stays at three courses
Food Safety for Engineering and Maintenance Teams
- The ten rules applied to repairs, modifications and temporary fixes
- Tool and parts counts, swarf, lubricants and maintenance materials
- Clean, inspect and release after planned and breakdown work
- CCP equipment, calibration, contractors, permits and change control
Priced in South African rand. Live conversion in nine currencies is shown below. No coupon or discount codes are accepted on this series. The launch prices run only to the dates shown on each course, and the Pathway above is the only standing saving.
The film
What the series actually teaches, in under three minutes
Narrated, built on the same engineering drawings the courses use, with the money worked out line by line. No actors and no stock footage.
Read the transcript
There is a machine on your floor that fails the same swab every year. The team is not the problem, and the chemical is not the problem. The problem was decided on a drawing, long before anybody bought the caustic.
Raise the temperature, raise the concentration, give it longer, and the soil inside a one millimetre gap is still there in the morning, because nothing in a cleaning cycle puts mechanical force into that gap. That is why this series starts with the drawing and not with the chemistry.
A folded corner, a bottom that will not drain and a blanked branch, three faults in one picture. By the end of Essentials you see all three from the gangway, you name the rule each one breaks, and you say which guideline asks for it.
Intermediate takes you into the engineering. The four traps a real product run hides, how to measure the one that matters, and what to write on the drawing so the next line arrives without them.
Advanced teaches you the argument, not just the fault. A slicer built from certified components at six point one million rand against a local build at two point nine. The gap is three point two million. Straight line over a twenty year life, undiscounted, that is one hundred and sixty thousand rand a year. Over two hundred and eighty eight cleans a year, that is five hundred and fifty six rand a night. The line takes fourteen person hours to clean, so a thirty eight percent saving is five point three of them, and the premium breaks even on labour alone only above about one hundred and five rand an hour. That is where the argument starts, not where it ends, and the course shows you how to finish it.
And then you stop finding faults and start preventing them. One blob called commissioning becomes four gates with four signatures, and no machine reaches production until every one of them is signed.
Three levels, eighty one lessons, and seventy nine original engineering diagrams drawn for this series and for nothing else. Two scored tools that turn a walk into a funded plan, a video proctored final, and a certificate anybody can verify online.
Start where you are. Essentials, two thousand four hundred rand. Intermediate, three thousand seven hundred. Advanced, six thousand five hundred. ASC food safety training dot com.
Two minutes forty nine seconds. Captions are on the player and the full transcript is above. Every figure in it is worked in full inside the courses.
The artwork
Seventy nine drawings, made for this series and nothing else
No stock photographs and no clip art. Every diagram was drawn for one lesson, from one fault, and redrawn when the guideline changed. Eight of them are below, straight out of the courses.
Three rules in one section
A folded corner, a bottom that will not drain and a blanked branch. One picture, three of the ten rules, drawn bad on the left and good on the right. This is why a delegate can walk their own line the week they finish rather than a month later.
Why cleaning cannot reach a crevice
Six stops on a conveyor, bad next to good
One pipe run, four traps
Two conveyor frames, the reservoir and the one welded closed
Two drains in section, the box and the pressed body
One blob called commissioning, or four gates with four signatures
The silo under ultraviolet light
Inside the courses
Watch a lesson before you spend anything
Not a promotional reel. These are the actual lessons, narrated, built on original engineering diagrams drawn for this series. Eighteen of them run through the series.
Read the transcript
In this video we find and measure a dead leg on your own line. You need a tape measure and about ten minutes. You do not need the drawings, which is fortunate, because the drawings will not show you what was actually installed.
This is one product run, drawn as installed rather than as designed. There are four traps on it. An air pocket where gas is held at a high point, a liquid trap where rinse water stands, a sag at a hidden low point, and a blanked branch the flow sweeps past. By the end of these ten minutes you will have found the equivalents on your own line, and you will know which ones have to come out.
First, what a dead leg is. It is a branch with no flow through it. A sampling point that was removed and capped. A blanked spare tee left for a machine that was never bought. A pressure gauge or a drain valve sitting on a long stub. Anything the main flow sweeps past instead of through. The cleaning solution shears across the mouth of it at full velocity and never enters, so whatever is in there stays in there, warm and wet, between every batch.
Now measure it. Length is taken from the wall of the main pipe to the face of the cap. Diameter is the bore of the branch, the inside, not the outside of the tube. Those two measurements are the whole exercise. Take them with a tape measure and photograph the tape in place, because somebody will question the number later.
The arithmetic, on a real example. At Amanzi Dairy an old sampling point on a seventy six millimetre raw milk line was blanked with a cap six hundred millimetres out, on a full bore tee, so the branch bore is seventy six as well. Six hundred divided by seventy six is about eight. Write down both numbers on the job card, not just the ratio, because a ratio with no measurements behind it cannot be checked by the next person.
What good looks like, and know whose rule you are quoting. The European Hygienic Engineering and Design Group closed equipment guidance sets a maximum length over diameter of one. Three A practice is commonly cited as two, and never longer than a hundred and twenty seven millimetres. Guideline Eight itself gives no length over diameter figure at all, so if you cite Guideline Eight for this number, somebody will eventually check. Quote the document you are actually relying on, by name and edition.
The same ten minutes finds two more things while you are there. The high point in the run that traps gas, so the cleaning solution never touches the top of the pipe. And the low point that holds rinse water after the circuit drains, which then sits there until the next production run pushes it into product.
On Monday, walk one product line with a tape measure. Photograph every capped branch, every sample point and every blanked tee. Measure length and diameter on each and work out the ratio. Anything above two goes on the risk register with a score. The fix is to cut it out and weld the cap flush with the main pipe wall, or to move the valve to the pipe wall so there is no stub left at all. And take the photographs to the next management review, not to the cleaning meeting, because this is a capital item and cleaning cannot solve it.
Next in this module, couplings, welds and the purge, which is what to specify before the welder starts rather than after. Heat tint, purge oxygen and the acceptance criteria you can hold a contractor to. Part of Intermediate Hygienic Design, nine hours, from ASC Food Safety Consultants.
How to find and measure a dead leg
Four minutes, from what it is to what you do on Monday. This is the teaching style, not a trailer.
Read the transcript
Welcome to Module One of Hygienic Design Essentials. Before we talk about rules, radii or stainless steel, we have to settle one argument, because everything else in this course rests on it. The argument is whether a cleaning problem is really a cleaning problem.
Three lessons in this module. What hygienic design actually is, and why no chemical, no temperature and no amount of scrubbing will correct a fault that was welded in at the fabricator. Where microorganisms live on a machine, which is a different question from where dirt sits. And how to divide any machine into a food area, a splash area and a non food area, with open and closed equipment judged by different rules.
Look carefully at this. The cleaning solution flows across the flat surface and shears past the mouth of the corner beside it. It removes the soil it touches. It does not enter the corner, so the disinfectant that follows never reaches what is living in there. This is why a swab taken on the flat can come back clean while the corner beside it is still growing.
By the end of this module you will be able to stand at any machine in your plant, name the three areas on it, and defend that call to an auditor. You will be able to explain to a production manager, in plain language, why a passing swab does not mean a clean machine. You will be able to point at a hollow frame tube and describe how an organism gets in, stays, and multiplies. And you will stop arguing about cleaning chemicals, and start arguing about geometry.
Here are the three areas drawn on one open kettle. Food area, where product touches or where anything falling would land in product. Splash area, where the wash and the process throw material that comes back. And non food area, everything else. The reason this matters is money. It tells you which findings you fix this week and which ones wait.
Two checks at the end of the module. A fifteen question knowledge check, drawn from a larger bank and shuffled every time, with three attempts. And a game called Spot the harbourage, which scores judgement rather than recall. The course itself closes with a proctored final assessment. Let us begin.
Why hygienic design decides food safety
The module opener. Three lessons, what you will be able to do, and how you are assessed.
Read the transcript
Welcome to Module One of Intermediate Hygienic Design. If you have come from the Essentials course, you already know what a bad weld and a dead leg look like. This module puts a structure underneath that knowledge, so that you can defend a decision and not only spot a fault.
Four lessons. The risk based approach, and how to assign a basic, medium or high hygiene level from the intended use of the equipment. The equipment lifecycle, from the user requirement specification through to legacy review, and the evidence each stage should produce. The standards and law map, so that you know which document actually binds you and which one is guidance. And hygienic zoning of the plant.
The hygiene level is chosen from intended use, not from the price list and not from the supplier’s brochure. Ask what the product is, whether there is a kill step after this machine, how long the product lives, and who eats it. Those four answers set the level, and the level sets the specification.
By the end of this module you will be able to assign a hygiene level to any machine and defend it on intended use. You will be able to name the document behind every number you specify, which is a discipline very few people in this industry keep. You will be able to draw your plant as zones and then draw the vectors that cross them. And you will ask for lifecycle evidence at the point where it still costs nothing to produce.
Zones, vectors and barriers on one ready meals plant. The zones are easy and most sites have them on a wall somewhere. The vectors are the part that gets missed. People, tools, waste, drainage and air all cross zone boundaries, and each crossing is either controlled or it is a route.
A fifteen question knowledge check with three attempts, and a game called Name the level. This course carries a proctored final assessment and an assignment in which you build a hygienic design risk register for your own plant. Module One is where that register begins.
Hygienic design as a system
Hygiene levels, the equipment lifecycle, the standards map and hygienic zoning.
Enrol from anywhere
How much does hygienic design training cost?
Delegates enrol from South Africa, the rest of Africa, the Gulf, Europe, the United Kingdom, Australia and North America. Prices are set in South African rand and the live conversion is shown below so there is nothing to work out before you decide. Payment is taken in rand and your bank converts at its own rate on the day.
Live rates load in your browser. Indicative only.
The argument this series settles
Why can cleaning not fix a design fault?
This is engineering, taught for the people who meet the machine.
Hygienic design decides whether cleaning can work at all. Cleaning solution shears across the mouth of a corner and never enters it. Disinfectant follows the same path. Every batch reinoculates the surface from a place no chemical has ever reached.
That is why a swab passes on the flat beside a corner that is still soiled, and why the same line fails the same test every year while the hygiene team carries the blame.
What you will be able to quote, by number
What are the ten rules of hygienic design?
The ten rules, and the document behind each one.
Most food safety training gives you principles. This gives you figures you can put in a purchase order, with the source named, drawn from EHEDG Guideline 8 fourth edition and the EHEDG detail guidelines it delegates to, with EN 1672-2 and ISO 14159 for machinery hygiene, 3-A Sanitary Standards practice, and R638 regulation 6 for South Africa, so a supplier cannot talk you out of them. It also teaches you which numbers in common use are not in the document people credit them to, which is the difference between a specification that holds and one that gets negotiated away.
| # | The rule | Source |
|---|---|---|
| 01 | Materials evaluated against the seven aspects, and stable in your cleaning chemistry at your temperature | GL8 4.6.1 for the seven aspects and 5.1 for destination country compliance. Regulation (EC) No 1935/2004 Article 3. R638 reg 6(1) for smooth, rust proof, non toxic, non absorbent and free of open joints or seams |
| 02 | Surfaces finished so they can be cleaned. Ra 0.8 micrometres or less on stainless steel, with no Ra figure for other materials | GL8 5.2.1, where the 0.8 is a recommendation. ASC specifies it |
| 03 | A radius on internal angles of less than 135 degrees. 3 mm is the ASC working minimum | GL8 5.2.3 sets the rule. The value is delegated to GL 10 and GL 13. The 3 mm is ASC |
| 04 | Drainable, with no pockets and no horizontal surfaces. 3 degrees on a pipe run is the ASC figure | GL8 4.6.3 and 5.2.3. The fourth edition gives no angle. The 3 degrees is ASC |
| 05 | No dead legs. L divided by D of 1 or less on a branch is the ASC specification figure | GL8 carries no figure. L over D of 1 is commonly cited industry guidance quoting EHEDG closed equipment practice. 3-A practice is commonly cited as 2, capped at 127 mm |
| 06 | Product contact welds continuous and free of imperfections, with no open joints or seams | GL8 5.2.2.1.1; GL 9, GL 35 and GL 54; R638 reg 6(1) for open joints and seams |
| 07 | Seals set flush to the product side, with compression you can control and check | GL8 5.2.2.2.1. Seal and O-ring design detail in GL 10, GL 13, GL 16 and GL 48 |
| 08 | No exposed threads in the product zone, and no fastener that can loosen into product | GL8 5.2.3 and 5.1. The fastener rule is ASC practice |
| 09 | Installed with clearance to clean under and behind, or sealed to the floor, and nothing dripping from above. 200 mm under the machine, 300 mm where it is not sealed down | GL8 6.1 and 6.3 for clearance and sealing, 4.6.4 for access, 5.3 for condensate. No clearance figure is given. The 200 mm and 300 mm are commonly cited supplier guidance, which ASC specifies |
| 10 | Cleanable in place, or cleanable by dismantling as the equipment class declares | GL8 4.3 Table 1, EL and ED Hygienic Classes I and II |
All Guideline 8 references are to the fourth edition, December 2025. Where a commonly quoted figure is ASC working practice rather than guideline text, the row says so. The South African instrument in full: Regulations Governing General Hygiene Requirements for Food Premises, the Transport of Food and Related Matters, R638 of 22 June 2018, Government Gazette 41730, under the Foodstuffs, Cosmetics and Disinfectants Act 54 of 1972.
What you walk away with
How do I audit my own line for hygienic design faults?
Two free tools that turn a walk into a funded plan.
Both run in your browser and export a spreadsheet. The spreadsheet they export is the document engineering needs to raise a capital request.
The Hygienic Design Walk
30 scored points across a line or a room, two override flags, photographs and job cards, exported to a spreadsheet you hand to engineering. Comes with Essentials, and it is free to run before you enrol.
The Hygienic Design Risk Register
Every finding scored on severity, likelihood and exposure, banded, with an interim control, a permanent fix, an owner, a cost and a date. Comes with Intermediate, and it is the assignment.
When one walk is not enough
The Hygienic Design Inspection System
The free walk scores one line, in one browser, and the next walk replaces it. If you are running this across a site, month after month, the subscription keeps every walk. Each line carries its own score history, so you can see which points keep failing and which zeros actually closed. Guidance sits against all 30 checks, with the rule, the source document, the usual cause and the line to write into a specification.
And at the end of a walk it writes the inspection report for you: the score, the priority zeros with both override flags applied, every finding against its rule and its source, the cost argument, and a one page note for management naming the top five. Print it, or take it away as a spreadsheet.
Sold on ascfoodsafety.com with the rest of the ASC automated tools. The two free tools above stay free and stay exactly as they are.
Take this with you
The ten rules on one page, with the document behind each one
A single A4 sheet you can put in front of a supplier or pin above the line. Every rule, every clause number, and a right hand column that says plainly which figures are in the guideline and which are ASC working practice. Free, no account and no email address needed.
Download the one page reference, PDFStay current
Food safety news and regulation updates, filtered for South Africa
Recalls, gazette notices, R638 and scheme changes, written by the ASC team. Free, and you can unsubscribe at any time. Your details are used only for this, in line with POPIA.
Get the ASC Food Safety UpdateWho it is for
Who should take hygienic design training?
Built for the people who decide what gets installed.
Quality and Food Safety Managers
You sign off corrective actions on findings cleaning cannot fix. This gives you the rule number and the drawing to change.
Engineering and Maintenance
Specify radii, slopes, welds and clearances before the steel is cut, and reject a quote on hollow sections alone.
Project and Process Engineers
Take a line from user requirement specification to commissioning with evidence at every gate.
Procurement and Technical Buyers
Ask for the three documents that matter at order, while you still have leverage.
Hygiene and Cleaning Managers
Prove which findings are design faults, and cost them in water, overtime and delayed starts.
Auditors and Consultants
Raise findings that hold, against the right document, at the right clause.
Equipment Suppliers and Fabricators
Understand what your food customers are about to start asking for, and build it in first.
Graduates and Career Changers
Every activity works on the built-in case studies, so you can finish without a site of your own.
Read before you spend
Seven guides, free, written by the people who built the courses
If the guides are useful, the courses are the same material with the diagrams, the videos, the assessments and the tools. Start anywhere.
Straight answers
Frequently asked questions
Do I need an engineering background?
No. Essentials assumes none and teaches through drawings and photographs of real faults. Intermediate goes into materials, pipework and building services and assumes Essentials or equivalent experience. Advanced assumes Intermediate or equivalent engineering experience, and adds risk assessment, specification, supplier control, verification and a capstone project on a brownfield upgrade. Nothing below Advanced asks for any calculation beyond dividing one measurement by another.
Which one should I start with?
Essentials, unless you already specify or install equipment for a living. It teaches you to see the fault and name the rule, and Intermediate builds directly on it. An engineer already comfortable with radii, slopes and dead legs 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 they also teach you which commonly used figures come from guidance rather than the standard.
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 drawn 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?
All three are online and self-paced, with lifetime access and no renewal. Essentials is five hours of content, Intermediate is nine and Advanced is twenty four, 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 on our website rather than taking a printed sheet on trust. 70% is needed to pass every assessment, and there are three attempts on each. The final assessment is video proctored, which needs nothing more than the webcam already in your laptop or phone, it runs on demand whenever you are ready rather than at a booked time, and a failed attempt simply returns feedback naming what to fix and which lesson to go back to.
Is there a discount or a group price?
There are no coupon or discount codes on this series. It is a technical course built with engineers and it is priced accordingly. There are two ways to pay less than the full three: the launch prices on the Intermediate and Advanced cards, which run only to the dates shown, and the Hygienic Design Pathway, which takes Essentials, Intermediate and the Engineering and Maintenance course together for R6 337, against R7 499 if you buy the three separately at today’s prices. For several seats from one company, contact us and we will deal with it directly.
I am outside South Africa. Can I enrol?
Yes, and a large share of delegates are. The courses run online and self-paced with no live sessions to attend, so time zone does not matter. The engineering content and the guidance documents referenced, including EHEDG and 3-A practice, are international. Prices are shown live in US dollars, euros, pounds, dirhams, Australian and Canadian dollars, riyals, naira and shillings, and you are charged in South African rand.
Is the content relevant outside South Africa?
Yes. Radii, slopes, dead legs, weld quality, surface finish, steel grades, drainage profiles and clearances are physics and metallurgy, not jurisdiction. One section covers South African regulation R638, and it is clearly marked so that a delegate in Nigeria, Kenya, the United Arab Emirates, the United Kingdom or Australia can map it onto their own regulation while the rest of the course applies unchanged.
Is this an EHEDG accredited course?
No. ASC is not an EHEDG authorised training provider and this is not an EHEDG course. The courses are written against EHEDG Guideline 8, fourth edition of December 2025, and the EHEDG detail guidelines it delegates to, with 3-A Sanitary Standards practice, EN 1672-2, ISO 14159 and R638 regulation 6, and every figure is cited to the document it comes from. Where a commonly quoted number is industry practice rather than guideline text, the course says so. ASC Food Safety Consultants is a FoodBev SETA accredited provider, number 587/00337/1900, and a SAATCA registered training centre, TC No. 065. Those are provider credentials. This series is not a SETA accredited qualification and carries no NQF credits. It awards the ASC Certificate of Achievement, QR verified.
Do you train teams and whole sites?
Yes. For several seats from one company, contact us and we will handle it directly, including invoicing in rand and a manager view of who has completed what. There are no coupon or discount codes on this series, and the Hygienic Design Pathway is the only standing saving.
Before you spend anything
What you can check before you pay, and what you keep afterwards
These courses are expensive enough that you should not have to take our word for any of it. Everything below is open to you now, without an account and without a card.
Course fees are payable in South African rand. Our full terms are linked in the footer, and your statutory rights as a consumer are not affected by anything on this page.
The fault is still there tomorrow
A badly designed line costs water, chemical, overtime and delayed starts for as long as it runs, and it keeps costing until somebody changes the drawing. Five hours is the cheapest thing you will ever do about it.