Safety performance components

To ensure that the safety program is working, most companies have a safety policy follow-through. This includes monthly safety meetings, performance reviews, and safety audits. The monthly safety meetings include a discussion of any accidents (and resolution of prevention means), training on specific issues, inspection of facilities, and delegation of work. Performance reviews within the company for all employees must have a visible safety performance component. 

Test demands Periodic equipment testing is an important source of demands, especially for safety system components that are often in a standby state. A review of the test procedures can be performed to obtain this information if it is not recorded in the maintenance records. 

Failure occurs when the component ceases to perform its required function. In the case of catastrophic failure, such as the rupture of a pipe or electrical breakdown of an insulator, this is obvious, but in many cases there is no such clear end of life. For example, is the end point when a small amount of environmental stress cracking has occurred, or when cracks have reached 5 mm in length Broadly, the definition of end point is that a property has reached a level at which safety, performance or market acceptance dictate that the component or product can no longer be used. 

SAE has established a Fuel Cells Standard Forum that is chartered with the establishment of standards and test procedures for fuel cell powered vehicles. The committee was established in 1999. The standards will cover the safety, performance, reliability and recyclability of fuel cell systems in vehicles with emphasis on efficiency and environmental impact. The standards will also establish test procedures for uniformity in test results for the vehicle/systems/components performance, and define interface requirements of the systems to the vehicle. Task Groups have been formed in the areas of safety, performance, reliability, emissions, recyclability, interface and miscellaneous. 

Designing for successful occupational health and safety performance requires a systematic approach. This includes understanding that the workplace is a system where changes in one element lead to influences on the other system components. It also means that efforts to make improvements must... 

When there is an option in terms of who performs tasks, a key question is who should be performing tasks with an associated safety risk component Without management intervention in this decision process, it is possible that a norm could develop within a work group or set of co-workers where the new employee is asked to complete tasks which other more senior employees find imdesirable. If these undesirable tasks also have a higher safety risk, then the normative behavior of getting the new employee to do these tasks exposes the new employee to unnecessary risk. This is clearly not desirable in terms of new employee safety, as they may in fact be the least capable to undertake the tasks in safe manner. 

Systems analysis techniques are used only to a limited extent in the process industries for two reasons. First, such techniques are not generally effective at predicting human behavior (e.g., WASH 1400 did not anticipate the Three Mile Island accident). Yet human performance is a very important component of safety performance in the process industries. Second, the use of PRA methodologies is generally time-consuming and expensive— particularly when used in the chemical industries where there is so much difference from facility to facility. 

Developing methods that integrate safety performance into the goals, operations, and productivity of organizations and their management and into systems, processes, and operations or their components. 

Directing, developing, or helping to develop management accountability and audit programs tliat assess safety performance of entire systems, organizations, processes, and operations or their components and involve both deterrents and incentives. 

The final key component of any safety performance program is the follow-up. Followup should be based on the trends and differences identified in the analysis. It can include developing new policies and procedures, modifying existing policies and procedures, or changing the physical characteristics of the workplace or job task. 

Implementing a safety performance system starts with defining the job-performance objectives for the position to be analyzed. This will require a thorough and accurate analysis of the job. The most common task analysis method for analyzing jobs requires a decomposition of job tasks into simpler subtasks, component tasks, or steps (Kaufman, Thiagarajan, and Sivasailam 1997, 189). The safety field is familiar with this process, as it is a common approach to conducting safety-related analyses such as job safety analyses or procedure analyses. Selection of the job tasks to analyze... 

For each of the components of the program to function properly, the proper data must be identified and collected. Valid and reliable data are the foundation for an effective metrics program. Data necessary to measure safety performance must be... 

While Six Sigma was originally used for developing continuous improvement programs related to production, many of its management structure components and methodologies can be applied to safety performance improvement in the workplace. One useful measure frequently used in Six Sigma is the capability index. 

The Class IE, 120 VAC instrument buses and inverters provide power to safety related equipment in the event of an emergency. Should these buses and inverters be out-of-service for an extended period of time, safety related components or systems may be unable to perform their intended safety function. This represents a potential safety concern. 

Without participating in the detail of accident investigation, it is very difficult to appreciate the role of human behaviour in accident causation and hence to recommend or implement the most effective responses. Similarly, sole reliance on numbers of accidents/incidents in the organization as a guide to safety performance can be misleading, if the behavioural component is not understood. They do not show whether individual managers/supervisors are effectively dealing with prevention or if further action is required to prevent future accidents and losses. 

---