Hazard safety decision hierarchy

Develop hazard control measures, applying the Safety Decision Hierarchy. 

Although a hazard analysis and a risk assessment would result from applying the preceding outline, good management requires that the remaining steps in The Safety Decision Hierarchy be taken, which are—decide and take action, and measure for effectiveness. 

Behavior-based safety does not recognize the most effective method of controlling hazards, which is through the application of the hierarchy of controls [p. 7]. (See The Safety Decision Hierarchy in Innovations in Safety Management Addressing Career Knowledge Needs.)... 

In that text, the discussion of each step is extensive. Comments will be made here on the first two only. The remaining steps are addressed in Chapter 12, Hierarchy of Controls The Safety Decision Hierarchy. For Step 1,—Identify the hazards—the hazard analysis and risk assessment methodologies are as shown in Table 2. 

The safety decision hierarchy depicts a way of thinking about hazards and risks and establishes an effective order for risk elimination or amelioration. Why propose that safety practitioners adopt a safety decision hierarchy This quote from The New... 

In applying The Safety Decision Hierarchy, the goal in the problem identification and analysis phase is to identify and analyze the hazards and assess the risks. Hazard and risk problems cannot be intelligently addressed until the hazards are analyzed and assessments are made of the probability of incidents or exposures occurring and the possible severity of their consequences. Chapter 8, A Primer on Hazard Analysis and Risk Assessment, is a resource for this problem identification and analysis phase. 

All facets of the safety decision hierarchy apply when considering the hazards and risks in a specific facility, process, system, piece of equipment, or a tool in its simplest form. Also, they are broadly applicable in aU three major aspects of the... 

If the followup activity indicates that the residual risk is not acceptable, the thought process set forth in the safety decision hierarchy would again be applied, commencing with hazard identification and analysis. 

To provide guidance to those applying The Safety Decision Hierarchy, we here reproduce General Design Requirements A Thought Process for Hazard Avoidance, Elimination, or Control, as it appeared in our earlier On The Practice Of Safety. This guideline is my extension of the incident and exposure prevention aspects of Haddon s work. 

Encompassing a hierarchy of controls within a sound problem-solving technique furthers the ability of management and safety professionals to achieve effective risk reduction, and to meet the requirements of certain provisions in ZIO. Adopting well-established problem-solving techniques to address hazard and risk situations is a fundamentally sound approach. That is the purpose of The Safety Decision Hierarchy. 

Much was made in Chapter 12, Hierarchy of Controls The Safety Decision Hierarchy, of the need to design work methods so that they were not error-provocative or overly stressful. Safety design reviews should not be Umited to the facility, equipment, and processes, that is—the hardware. They should also limit the hazards and risks in the work methods prescribed, taking into consideration the capabilities and limitations of the workers so that the risks of injury and damage are at a practicable minimum. 

The hierarchy presented in the standard is the basis for decision making when applying every section in ZIO that is intended to resolve occupational health and safety issues. Those issues are detined as hazards, risks, management system deti-ciencies, and opportunities for improvement. This hierarchy is of such importance that a separate chapter in this book is devoted to it. This chapter will ... 

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