Safety management system control measures

An organizational framework or a safety management system is required to avoid accidents or incidents. It comprises procedures for monitoring the production process and the work environment such that hazards are understood and controlled. To this end hazard analyses for work places are carried out (cf. [5,7, 8]) and events are evaluated in order to identify and implement measures apt to avoid their recurrence or to make them at least less probable. This has to be a continuous process. 

A safety and health audit of the work being done to control loss measures the safety system and highlights its strengths and weaknesses. The audit compares work being done, and standards being maintained, with accepted safety and health standards. It can be used to review and evaluate the performance and effectiveness of the safety system, and also to establish whether or not it meets international safety management system standards. 

The health and safety culture of an organization is an important factor in ensuring the effectiveness of risk control. The health and safety management system is an important influence on the safety culture, which in turn impacts on the effectiveness of the health and safety management system. Measuring aspects of the safety culture therefore forms part of the overall process of measuring health and safety performance. (P-14)... 

Many organizations may make substantial revisions in their audit systems as they achieve conformance with ZIO. Requirements are for safety and health management systems audits, not specification audits. Periodic audits are to measure the organization s effectiveness in implementing the elements of the occupational health and safety management systems. Thus, the audits are to determine whether the management systems in place do or do not effectively identify hazards and control risks. 

Rather than relying solely on these after-the-event measures, an audit provides a before-the-fact measure of control activities. A more valid comparison from year-to-year or site-to-site becomes possible. All elements of the plan, or the health and safety management system, can be critically reviewed so that priorities for future action may be determined. 

In the previous chapter, it was established that in industry, plant hazards can cause harm to property (plant—machinery, asset), people, or the environment. So, it is important to develop some means of analyzing these and come up with a solution. Unfortunately, it is not as straightforward as it sounds. There are plenty of plant hazard analysis (PHA) techniques and each of them has certain strengths and weaknesses. Also each specific plant and associated hazard has specific requirements to be matched so that hazard analysis will be effective. In this chapter, various hazards (in generic terms) will be examined to judge their importance, conditions, quality, etc. so that out of so many techniques available for PHA it is possible to select which one is better (not the best because that needs to be done by experts specifically for the concerned plant) suited for the type of plant. So, discussion will be more toward evaluation of PHA techniques. Some PHA is more suited for process safety management (PSM) and is sometimes more applicable for internal fault effects [e.g., hazard and operability study (HAZOP)]. In contrast, hazard identification (HAZID) is applicable for other plants, especially for the identification of external effects and maj or incidents. HAZID is also covered in this chapter. As a continuation of the same discussion, it will be better to look at various aspects of risk analysis with preliminary ideas already developed in the previous chapter. In risk analysis risk assessment, control measures for safety management systems (SMSs) will be discussed to complete the topic. 

Control measure and safety management system (SMS) in risk analysis. 

Measurement is a key step in any management process and forms the basis of continuous improvement. If measurement is not carried out correctly, the effectiveness of the health and safety management system is undermined and there is no reliable information to show managers how well the health and safety risks are controlled. 

Formal arrangements must be devised (and recorded) for effective planning, organization, control, monitoring and review of safety measures. This will involve an effective health and safety management system to implement the policy. Where there are five or more employees the arrangements should be recorded. 

You cannot eliminate high risk acts and conditions until you have effective control measures in the form of a structured safety management system. 

TCIR and EMR data and measurements are subjected to influence from conditions and elements beyond the safety management system s control and can negate what on the surface may appear to be a successful accomplishment. The reduction of the TCIR and EMR may or may not be an indication that the safety culture improved. 

Once the hazard and associated risk assessments are completed, the next step in the development of a safety management system is the implementation of control measures to eliminate or reduce the risk of harm to employees. 

However, the assessment of the results of the changes over the past ten years also has many positive aspects Companies have become more risk aware, safety cases and safety management systems are positive developments and there is more understanding of how and why risk control and management measures work. 

Within the oil and gas industry in Norway, major companies have largely standardized the work processes on board in an effort to control and measure operations. Safety management systems (regulations, procedures, work processes) may influence safety on board in a positive way, such as carrying out necessary operations planning. 

In all control measures, reliance is placed upon human behaviour to carry out the solutions, so a major task of any safety management system is to assure safe behaviour by motivation, education, training and the creation of work patterns and structures which enable safe behaviour to be practised. Discussion of some aspects of human failure can be found in Chapter 11. 

While this does seem to be a comprehensive suite of risk control measures, the real reason for the problem emerged during a potential human error audit and safety management system review which was being rmdertaken at the mine - not one of the 150+ vehicles in the undergrotmd fleet at the mine was fitted with a speedometer. 

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