Occupational Safety Audit

In the area of business economics, the notion of an audit means verifying the condition of a business (or company) or an integral part of one of the organizational units. Results of such verification must be recorded in various forms. 

An occupational safety audit or safety audit comprises the experiences of managers and experts in the field of occupational health and safety during the examination of a business, inspection and control of workplaces and technical devices, and during training and seminars. 

A safety audit is one of the basic elements of safety culture. Safety culture presupposes the creation of working conditions in which occupational health and safety is understood as a joint task of employers and employees on every level of the company s management. 

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Existing occupational safety audit procedures unannounced checks of occupational safety measures put in place to find out whether they are functioning... 

A P2 audit differs from most other types of audits because it makes use of a dual benchmarking approach namely, it uses both technical (environmental performance) and financial performance as its basis for making corrective actions. The status quo most often serves as the benchmark, though other standards certainly can be devised. A P2 audit can also affect non-environmental issues. The types of corrective actions can affect other types of wastes, energy, occupational safety, product quality, and worker productivity. 

The financial impact of pain is considered to be significant. The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) estimated that the cost of low back pain alone was between 50 billion and 100 billion per year.12 The American Productivity Audit of the United States workforce, conducted from 2001 to 2002, revealed that the cost of lost productivity due to arthritis, back pain, headache, and other musculoskeletal pain was approximately 80 billion per year.13... 

Environmental auditing can cover a wide range of objectives. The approach can focus on how well a manufacturing facility is complying with the various environmental regulations, such as the Clean Air Act Amendments (C AAA), the Clean Water Act (CWA), the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA), Title III of the Superfund Amendments and Reauthorization Act (SARA), the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation and Liability Act (CERCLA), the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA), various aspects ofthe Occupational Safety andHealth Act (OSHA), and can also cover property acquisition. It can also cover the various State regulations, for instance, in New Jersey an environmental audit can cover the Toxic Catastrophe Prevention Act (TCPA), the Spill Act, and the State... 

Internal auditing is taking place, and during 1998 ten occupational health safety audits were conducted at former Degussa sites. 

Compared with the developed countries, there is still a big gap of production safety guarantee mechanism between China and other developed countries. One of the reasons is that Safety agency did not play a necessary role. The application of intermediary institutions for evaluation, certification and identification of occupational safety and health, is an important means of national production safety supervision work and this method has been a practice in many developed countries. As the number of safety agency and their management level continue to increase, safety agencies promote safety production standard. Safety auditing theories contribute to the development of intermediary organizations of safety audit activities and help them expand their business scope. 

In other words, an audit compares what is with what should be. A management program is measured against an external standard such as a regulation or corporate benchmark. It is fundamentally a pass/fail test. For example, paragraph 1910.119(a)(1) of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) Process Safety Standard states that ... 

External safety system audits were arranged, and external international auditors spent a week on the property evaluating the safety system. A four-star safety rating was achieved and issued by the National Occupational Safety Association (NOSA) of South Africa. The internal trained auditors then followed up with 6-monthly internal audits. 

From 1973 to 1994, McKinnon was affiliated with the National Occupational Safety Association of South Africa (NOSA) in various capacities, including safety and health training and motivation. He is experienced in implementation of safety systems, auditing of safety systems, and safety culture change interventions. During his tenure with NOSA, he implemented safety systems and conducted training in seven different countries. 

An audit check performed prior to equipment operation to ensure that adequate Process Safety Management (PSM) activities have been performed. The check should verify that (1) construction and equipment are satisfactory, (2) procedures are available and adequate, (3) a Process Hazard Analysis (PHA) has been undertaken and recommendations resolved, and (4) the employees are trained. It is part of the requirements of the PSM program outlined in the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) regulation 29 CFR 1910.119. 

Similarly, regulatory agencies equivalent to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency or U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration, where they exist, may not have jurisdiction over laboratory-scale operations, or they are ineffective. As a result, there is no external audit of safety practices of chemical laboratories. 

Compliance of the safety process to laws, regulations, and company policies and procedures is measured effectively by audits. Self-audits can be effective, if done with objective honesty. More than 85 percent of employers in a recent Occupational Safety and Health Administration survey said they conduct voluntary self-audits of safety and health conditions in their workplaces (HE Solutions 1999, 12). With a 60% increase over an 18-year period in the number of organizations indicating they conduct audits, nearly 90 percent of the respondents indicated they had conducted an audit in the past 12 months (HE Solutions 1999,12). Reasons for conducting these audits include the need to reduce accidents, to do what is considered right for worker safety and health, and to ensure OSHA compliance. Additional motivators for organizations to conduct audits include decreases in injury rates, improvement in insurance rates, and mitigating fines from OSHA violations. 

Accompanying the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) compliance officers during plant inspections and insurance safety and health professionals on audits and plant surveys the safety and health professional reviews reports that relate to these activities and, with management, initiates action for necessary corrections... 

Workplace audits are inspections that are conducted to evaluate certain aspects of the work environment regarding occupational safety and health. The use of safety and health audits has been shown to have a positive effect on a company s loss control initiative. In fact, companies that perform safety and health audits have fewer accidents/incidents than companies that do not perform such audits. 

Several studies have raised questions about the value of quality, environmental and occupational health and safety management system certification [audits]. Many of the concerns raised in these studies have focused on the competency of the auditors performing conformity assessment audits. [Author s note The foregoing comments pertain principally to audits made for management system certifications with respect to quality, environmental, and occupational safety and health by persons external to an organization. Nevertheless, similar questions have been raised for many years about the value of comparable audits made by in-house personnel.]... 

Over time, ZIO will become the benchmark against which the adequacy of occupational safety and health management systems will be measured. Societal expectations of employers with respect to their safety and health management systems will be defined by the standard s provisions. The audit system put in place should assist management in moving closer to compliance with the provisions in ZIO. 

With regard to ensuring employee safety and health, all of OSHA s subparts listed in Figure 9.1 could be employed by employers not only to protect workers but also to ensure OSHA compliance. In this section, we specifically list and describe those standards that are most often cited in Industry Group 138 for lack of compliance or willful violation of Occupational Safety and Health Standards (29 CFR 1910) found during OSHA audits and determined to be causal factors during post-accident/fatality investigations. 

More generally, risk assessment has become increasingly weighty both at the level of national policy decisions and also locally. Local managers are expected to think in terms of risk assessment. Health and safety auditing has also emerged as a key tool in the management of occupational health and safety risks. 

The systematization of approaches to occupational health and safety can also be seen as part of a broader societal/governmental trend, in particular the emphasis upon performance indicators such as safety targets, safety plans, and safety audits (Hood and Jones, 1996 Power, 1997). This was, for example, reflected in governmental approaches to regulation. In 1996, for instance, the Interdepartmental Liaison Group on Risk Assessment (ILGRA) was set up so that senior policy-makers could consider more efficient and effective ways for... 

Everley, M. (1995). The Price of Cost Benefit. Health cmd Safety at Work, 17(9), 13-15. Glendon, I. (1995). Safety Auditing. Journal of Occupational Health and Safety-Aust NZ, 11(6), 569-75. 

Glendon, I. (1995). Safety Auditing. Journal of Occupational Health and Safety-Aust. NZ, 11(6), 569-75. 

Safety, health, and environmental management and audit systems (e.g., ANSI/AIHA ZIO, ISO 14000 series, OHSAS18000 series, ISO 19011, U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration Voluntary Protection Programs)... 

Comments have been made elsewhere in this book about transitions taking place in the practice of safety, one of which is combining the responsibility for occupational safety and health and environmental controls into one entity. That has occurred at a corporate level, at some locations of larger companies, and more frequently in the not-huge-and-smaller organizations where but one or two safety professionals may be employed. That poses the following question Practicably what is the purpose of an audit and what should a risk-based audit system encompass This chapter discusses ... 

Dunlap is a published writer on such topics as Occupational Safety and Health Association (OSHA) compliance. Department of Transportation compliance, behavior-based safety, and organizational safety culture. His work has appeared in Professional Safety, the Online Journal of Distance Learning Administration, the Journal of Emergency Medical Services, and World Grain Magazine. His most substantial work has been the publication of textbooks on motor carrier safety and auditing. His current research is in the area of industry leader development and involvement in workplace safety leadership. 

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