Prevention through design

Prevention through design (PtD), also called safety by design usually in Europe, is the concept of applying methods to minimize occupational hazards early in the design process, with an emphasis on optimizing employee health and safety throughout the life cycle of materials and processes. It is a concept and movement that encourages construction or product designers to "design out" health and safety risks during design development. The process also encourages the various stakeholders within a construction project to be collaborative and share the responsibilities of workers' safety evenly. The concept supports the view that along with quality, programme and cost; safety is determined during the design stage. It increases the cost-effectiveness of enhancements to occupational safety and health.

Compared to traditional forms of hazard control, PtD possesses a proactive nature whereas other safety measures are reactive to incidences that occur within construction projects. This method for reducing workplace safety risks lessens workers' reliance on personal protective equipment, which is the least effective of the hierarchy of hazard control.

In the domain of process safety, safety by design is usually referred to as inherent safety or inherently safer design (ISD).