Safety culture documentation

Where an effective informal system exists and is followed, the issue is one of style, not substance. A facility or unit may have a strong safety culture and sound safety practices, but its managers lack the habit of form documentation, or simply don t think it is important. Assuming that safety performance meets applicable standards, you will probably assign cases like these a relatively low priority, compared with other noncompliance situations. Cases like these are also often the easiest to fix since the fundamentals are already in place, what s required is simply to formalize the informal system by preparing and implementing documentation procedures. 

With the development of reform and opening-up and social economy, most enterprises have carried out the construction of enterprise culture. The importance of safety culture construction is spoken in various meetings and documents, which forms the "cultural fever". However, from the view of specific execution situation of coal mine safety culture construction, there is widespread formalism phenomenon. 

Unhealthy work atmospheres with respect to safety and communication are not limited to NASA. Carroll documents a similarly dysfunctional safety culture at the Millstone nuclear power plant [33]. An NRC review in 1996 concluded the safety culture at the plant was dangerously flawed it did not tolerate dissenting views and stifled questioning attitudes among employees. 

The National Commission recommended looking at the nuclear industry for an example of drastic improvement in safety culture. No reference document is cited. 

Other useful documents that promote a safety culture include formal audits of health and safety in specific high risk areas. The checklist in the Appendix (p. 157) is an example of such an audit in physical education. The different sections serve as a reminder to both teachers and coordinators of the many aspects of health and safety and the completed... 

The leading document in the safety system is the official safety and health policy issued by the executive management. This policy forms the commitment to implement a structured safety management system, which in turn will bring about a change in the safety culture. The policy should be prominently displayed in the office foyer, on the company website, in the employees safety handbook, and on safety notice boards. 

The safety policy statement is a substitute for repetitive management decisions and is mandatory. This is the guiding document in a safety system and perhaps the most important in implementing a change in safety culture. Although the concept safety should appear in the vision and mission statements of the organization, the safety policy statement is the declaration of the company s safety intent, commitment, and responsibility to constantly promote a safe and healthy work enviromnent. This policy should be extensively publicized and displayed on all notice boards, on the company website, in the employee safety handbook, and in prominent positions throughout the workplace. 

Having standards for each element of the safety system means that safety issues are documented and the requirements are clearly spelled out. Both managers and employees prefer safety directives and policies in writing so that expectations at all levels are clearly spelled out. Safety standards commit the organization and its members to carry out certain safety activities on a regular basis, and who must perform the activity and what the required result is are clearly laid out in the standard. Having committed the organization and its members to specific standards creates the foundation of the company s safety culture—its safety personality. 

With so much information and work that has culminated in this document, numerous people need to be thanked. I thank the industrialists and miners who 1 have worked with over the last 38 years. 1 learned industrial safety from them and a great deal about what safety culture is all about and how they have changed their organization s safety culture. 

The development project shall be governed by an organization with good safety culture, where safety is the highest priority. Processes provide adequate and independent checks and balances, intellectual diversity is sought in all processes and that a defined, documented, disciplined process is followed at all levels. 

Recommendation 2. BOEM s enhanced SMS rule should be contained in a single document should encompass all activities including construction, operation and maintenance, and a framework for decommissioning and should promote a positive safety culture within an organization. The SMS rule should be supplemented by specific requirements sufficient to ensure consistent health and safety performance across the population of operators and contractors and to provide equal protection for employees at all locations, regardless of jm-isdiction. 

Consider documenting any process safety culture criterion or measurements the comparer wants to be consistently effective and maintain a dependable practice over... 

A Management Review is to result in a documentation of the action items necessary to achieve continual improvement in occupational health and safety management systems, the assignment of responsibility for the actions to be taken, completion dates, and requirements for periodic reporting on progress made. One test of the organization s safety culture is whether resources are made available to achieve the improvements decided upon. 

The components of the SCMM were based on the safety culture features listed in the Health and Safety Executive s human factors guidance document HS(G)48 (HSE, 1999). The initial model was tested by interviewing safety experts, operational managers, safety representatives and frontline staff about their company s safety culture development and the applicability of the SCMM. This led to the definition of a Safety Culture Maturity Model, with five levels of maturity (as shown in Figure 1) and ten elements, namely ... 

Their document lists nine attributes of a robust safety culture. They are listed in Table 1.11. 

Naturally, the scope of the four documents is very broad and they cover a very wide range of topics including details of the Deepwater Horizon event, the subsequent environmental impact, the regulatory background, and emergency response. But one topic threads through these reports safety culture in the offshore oil and gas industries and how culture can be developed, implemented, and measured. 

For a safety culture to be maintained, it must have the best possible information to preserve the level of knowledge required to keep risk and hazards clearly identified. As people come and go, reorganizations occur, and new endeavors begin, information can be lost without a comprehensive method for maintaining documents or records. 

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