Certified Ergonomic Evaluation Specialist

The Certified Ergonomic Evaluation Specialist (CEES) certification prepares clinicians and safety professionals to conduct defensible industrial ergonomic assessments and to turn their findings into practical, cost-conscious changes that organizations can implement and sustain. Great ergonomics solves problems; a CEES specialist solves them in a way a company can actually carry out, and can show afterward that the exposure changed.

The certification is built around a gap that runs through much of workplace ergonomics. Assessments are completed, risk is identified, and reports are delivered, yet the work itself often stays the same. Recommendations are too general to act on, are not sized to the people who do the job, compete with production and budget realities, or are replaced by a training session that asks the worker to compensate for the design of the work. CEES addresses each of those failure points, from the first observation of a job to the verification that a change held.

The certification begins with a four-course Foundation shared across the Matheson certifications. Participants examine how work-related musculoskeletal disorders develop through the interaction of posture, force, repetition, duration, and recovery with the capacity of the tissues carrying the load, and learn to recognize the early signs of a developing exposure-capacity imbalance. They examine the biopsychosocial factors that shape symptom reporting, recovery, and return to work, and how those factors can be identified and addressed across clinical, supervisory, and organizational roles.

The Foundation also establishes two skills every later course depends on. Participants learn to conduct a defensible Job Demands Analysis that describes the job as it is actually performed, task by task, with its physical and psychosocial demands documented. They learn to read workplace injury data, including OSHA recordables, DART and incident rates, and workers' compensation measures, as signals that guide investigation, and to turn the patterns in that data into prioritized prevention decisions.

The Framework develops the core of industrial ergonomic practice. Participants learn to assess industrial jobs as systems, separating the job as designed from the job as performed, and to apply the three-tier assessment framework to decide how deep an assessment needs to go. They select and apply structured tools, including REBA, RULA, OWAS, the Strain Index, the ACGIH TLV for Hand Activity Level, the NIOSH Lifting Equation, the Liberty Mutual tables, and the Key Indicator Methods, based on the question each one answers, and converge every source of information on the primary driver of exposure.

From there, the Framework moves from finding to change. Participants translate assessment findings into engineering controls, administrative controls, and worksite design, using anthropometric data to size solutions to the working population rather than to the worker assessed. They compare candidate solutions, check where a change moves the load, and verify through re-measurement that the targeted exposure actually fell. They learn where worker education and coaching belong, how to teach a task-specific practice and coach an experienced worker through a new movement pattern, and why education runs alongside a fix to the work rather than in place of one.

The Framework closes at the level of the organization. Participants learn to design an ergonomics program that assigns clear ownership, prioritizes findings across cost tiers and budget cycles, builds a multi-stream return-on-investment case that finance and operations will approve, and tracks every recommendation until it is verified effective and confirmed in use. The aim is a program that reports results rather than activity.

The Industrial Ergonomics Capstone integrates the full track across seven realistic, unsignaled industrial cases drawn from commercial laundry, furniture manufacturing, beverage bottling, commercial baking, materials recovery, boat building, and commercial construction. Participants frame each referral before assessing, decide which knowledge to apply, at what depth, and when to stop, and work cases that begin from a single worker, from a facility injury rate, and from a control that nobody uses. The Capstone ends with a case worked independently from referral to follow-up plan, then submitted and scored against an eight-dimension rubric.

The certification is awarded after the Applied Fieldwork Review, in which candidates submit ten ergonomic assessment reports from their own practice. Two are selected and evaluated by a Matheson instructor against credentialing criteria: the use of a validated ergonomic tool to quantify and justify risk, risk ratings supported by objective findings, recommendations that are specific, realistic, and actionable for the workplace, complete supporting documentation, and the removal of all protected health information. CEES is a working credential, earned by demonstrating the quality of real assessments, not by attendance alone.

Target Audience:

Physical Therapists, Physical Therapist Assistants, Occupational Therapists, Occupational Therapy Assistants, Athletic Trainers, Occupational Health Nurses, Safety Professionals, Ergonomics Professionals, Human Resources Professionals, and other professionals who perform or commission industrial ergonomic assessments.

Instructional Level:

Intermediate

Prerequisites:

None. The courses are completed in sequence: the Foundation first, then the Framework, then the Capstone.

Learning Objectives:

Upon completion of this certification, participants will be able to:

• Explain how work-related musculoskeletal disorders develop through the interaction of workplace exposure, tissue capacity, and psychosocial factors.
• Conduct a defensible Job Demands Analysis and use injury data to identify and prioritize prevention opportunities.
• Scope industrial ergonomic assessments using the three-tier framework, and select structured assessment tools by the question each answers.
• Integrate worker interview, observation, job demands, injury records, sensor and video data, and structured tool findings to identify the primary drivers of exposure.
• Translate assessment findings into engineering, administrative, and worksite design controls sized to the working population.
• Apply worker education and coaching where behavior is the appropriate lever, alongside changes to the work rather than in place of them.
• Build and sustain an ergonomics program that tracks recommendations through implementation, verification, and measurement.
• Produce defensible ergonomic assessment reports that connect findings, reasoning, recommendations, and follow-up for the reader who must act on them.

Educational Methods:

Didactic instruction, case-based analysis, industrial workplace examples, worker interview analysis, Job Demands Analysis, structured ergonomic assessment and tool interpretation, control-selection and worksite design exercises, education and coaching exercises, program-design activities, professional documentation practice, an independently worked capstone case submission, and an Applied Fieldwork Review of the candidate's own assessment reports.

Continuing Education Units / Contact Hours:

21 hours (2.1 CEUs) across 9 courses. Full Attendance Required.

Sponsors:

This program is not sponsored by any commercial entity. No commercial support has influenced course content.

Disclosure Statement:

All faculty and planners have disclosed relevant financial and non-financial relationships. Any potential conflicts of interest have been reviewed and mitigated in accordance with continuing education standards.

Cancellation & Refund Policy:

Refunds are available in accordance with Matheson's cancellation and refund policy. Please refer to our Cancellation Policy for full details.

Foundation

• Understanding Work-Related Musculoskeletal Injury
• Workplace Exposure and Physical Demands
• Tissue Loading, Capacity, and Fatigue
• Common Work-Related Musculoskeletal Disorders
• Early Identification and Symptom Recognition
• Response, Intervention, and Return to Work

• The Biopsychosocial Model
• Key Psychosocial Factors in Workplace Injury
• Identification Across Roles
• The Intervention Pathway

• Introduction to Job Demands Analysis and Professional Relevance
• Defining the Job and Context
• Task Breakdown Methodology
• Essential Versus Non-Essential Tasks
• Physical and Psychosocial Job Demands
• Documentation and Defensibility
• Conducting a Job Demands Analysis
• Application and Case Integration

• What Injury Metrics Actually Represent
• Finding Patterns That Matter
• Why the Numbers Don't Tell the Whole Story
• Turning Decisions Into Action
• Applying the Concepts - Scenarios

Framework

• Stating What Must Change
• Designing for a Population, Not a Person
• Putting the Dimensions to Work
• Comparing Solutions and Checking for Displacement
• Mock Up, Pilot, and Verify

• The Nature of Industrial Ergonomic Risk
• The Industrial Job as a System
• The Industrial Assessment Framework
• Variable and Non-Standard Industrial Environments
• Structured Assessment Tools
• Developing Industrial Ergonomic Recommendations

• Why Recommendations Fail
• Roles, Champions, and the Intake Pathway
• Prioritizing Across Cost Tiers and Fiscal Cycles
• Building the ROI Case
• Tracking to Closure and Measuring the Program

• Where Behavior Belongs
• Education That Connects to the Job
• Coaching a New Movement Pattern
• Participation, Supervisors, and Trust
• Knowing Whether It Worked

Capstone

• The Integrated Case
• Case 1 - Rosa, Wash Floor Operator
• Case 2 - Terrence, Upholsterer
• Case 3 - Nadia, Hand Palletizer
• Consolidation - Tool Selection and Scoping
• Case 4 - Luis and the Bread Packaging Line
• Case 5 - The Material Recovery Facility
• Case 6 - Kyle and the Lift That Nobody Uses
• Documentation Practice
• Case 7 - Marcus, Journeyman Electrician, Independent Submission

Applied Fieldwork Review

• Submit 10 ergonomic assessment reports for review
• 2 reports will be selected for formal evaluation against Matheson credentialing criteria
• Reports must demonstrate the use of validated ergonomic tools to quantify and justify risk
• Recommendations must be practical and realistic for the workplace environment
• Include all supporting documentation and remove all PHI (Protected Health Information) before submission
• A Matheson instructor will review the selected reports
• If the reports demonstrate a high level of knowledge and quality, the certification is awarded