Safety performance measurement Quantitative

Quantitative safety performance measurements can be either outcome oriented or process oriented (Daugherty 1999, 147). Outcome-oriented performance measures are after-the-fact measures. The performance activity has occurred then the results have been measured. Examples of outcome measures used in safety include the reduction in the number of accidents, lost workdays, etc. Outcome measures can provide an indication as to the impact safety program interventions have upon safety performance. These performance measures provide an historical account of the effectiveness of past performance. 

There are many ways to categorize safety performance measures. They are often classified as trailing or leading indicators, outcome or process oriented, results or activity-based measures, downstream factors or upstream factors, and/or qualitative or quantitative metrics. 

Business Metrics for Safety A Quantitative Measurement Approach to Safety Performance by Daniel Patrick O Brien, August 1998. 

There was no explicit assessment of safety culture, in combination with a quantitative evaluation of the HSE environment in the accident reports. Such an assessment could be used to get a collective measure or temperarnre of the priority of safety in the organization, related to best practice . In Itho (2004) there is shown a correlation between the level of safety culture and quantitative incidents/acddents thus safety culture could be used as an indicator of the holes in harriers or the level of erosion of barriers, in combination with quantitative HSE data. A more specific measure tan culture is described by Rundmo (1997) i.e. when an employee in the Norwegian oil and gas industry feels at risk he/she is at risk. A proactive indicator could thus be a workplace survey, measuring risk perceptions or performing a more broadly based assessment of safety culture in combination with other local quantitative indicators such as gas emissions, injuries compared with best practice in the industry. 

Quantitative Risk Assessment. Previous sections in this chapter dealt with the identification, measurement, and mitigation of hazards in a chlor-alkali plant. Plant safety and Responsible Care programs define the objectives of continuous improvement in safety performance. The discussion of mitigation immediately above naturally leads on to the larger question of the most direct and cost-effective approach to this improvement. 

One of the main advantages of using performance measures is that they enable companies to express the results of a safety process in quantitative, not qualitative, terms that can then be analyzed to determine efficiency of safety and health processes (Leandri 2001,39). These measurements permit identification and prioritization. They also identify the most rewarding efforts and allow prioritization of company-wide issues. 

Performance measurements are grouped into two categories qualitative and quantitative. Qualitative safety measurements include checklists and narrative evaluations from accident report forms. Quantitative performance measures include any performance measures to which a number can be assigned. Measurement is crucial to achieving excellence in safety from two broad standpoints (Petersen 1998) ... 

Qualitative performance measurements, such as checklists, are commonly used to assess the status of safety and health programs. Quantitative, or objective, performance measurements are necessary for precision, consistency, and reproducibility. 

Process outcome measurements, production rates, loss rates, and positive and negative occupational performance indicators are all organizational parameters which can be measured. The reason measmement is important in the QM process is because it provides quantitative analysis of performance. Knowing the expected value or result of the measurement is important, as arty variation from the expected result will be the starting point for further analysis of the cause of the variation. In relation to safety performance, benchmarking can be done across industry or internally against organizational safety performance indicators. 

This list provides three examples of how audits can be implemented and used to measure safety performance. Other audits can be developed and implemented based on the needs of a school, such as access control audits or behavior-based audits to monitor for the presence of bullying among students. An audit is a flexible tool that can be used to accommodate the needs of a school. The quantitative findings can be measured across time to monitor performance and communicate the performance to faculty and staff... 

For values obtained in the neighborhood of the MRL, quantitative accuracy and precision are of extreme importance. Thus, a laboratory should take a safety measurement zone depending upon the validation performance of the used method. Questions may also sometimes arise as to which way some numerical concenttation values (such as 1.56 ppb) would be rounded to be converted into a yes or no answer when the action level is, for example, 2 ppb. In that case, caution should be exercised with regard to the number of significant values to reflect the precision of the applied analytical method. 

To reliably perform qualitative and quantitative analyses on body fluids and tissue, the clinical laboratorian must understand the basic principles and procedures that affect the analytical process and operation of the clinical laboratory. These include the knowledge of (1) the concept of solute and solvent, (2) units of measurement, (3) chemicals and reference materials, (4) basic techniques, such as volumetric sampling and dispensing, centrifugation, measurement of radioactivity, gravimetry, thermometry, buffer solution, and processing of solutions, and (5) safety. ... 

This chapter explains the meaning of the above statements. It describes flammability and smoke/toxic gases evolntion at burning of wood compared to wood-plastic composite (WPC) materials and products of different compositions and profiles. It also explains flammability and fire ratings and indexes as quantitative measures for fire hazard and fire safety, and fire performance characteristics in general of wood and composites. 

Define the temperature failure criteria for the material. The producer determines experimentally the maximum service temperature his material can achieve and still provide acceptable performance. The producer determines the heat deflection temperature (ASTM D 648), Vicat Softening Temperature (ASTM D 1525), Coefficient of Thermal Expansion (ASTM D 696) or other appropriate quantitative measure of material s performance under heat. The producer then adds a suitable safety factor to the temperature determined to cause failure. 

An indicator is an objective, quantitative measurement of an outcome or process that relates to performance quality. The event being assessed can be either desirable or undesirable. It is objective in that the same measurement can be obtained by different observers. This indicator represents quantitative, measured data that are gathered for further analysis. Indicators can assess many different aspects of quality, including accessibility, appropriateness, continuity, customer satisfaction, effectiveness, efficacy, efficiency, safety, and timeliness. 

A quantitative target for measuring the level of performance needed for safety function to achieve a tolerable risk for a process hazard. It is a measure of safety system performance, in terms of the probability of failure on demand. There are four discreet integrity levels, SIL 1-4. The higher the SIL level, the higher the associated safety level and the lower the probability that a system will fail to perform properly. Defining a target SIL level for a process should be based on the assessment of the likelihood that an incident will occur and the consequences of the incident. Table S.2 describes SIL for different modes of operation. 

The purpose of this research is to construct probabilistic safety models for a typical loop-type FBR plant so that an overall safety assessment can be performed. It is expected that (1) a systematic evaluation on the plant safety is conducted based on the quantitative analysis, (2) the insights on measures to enhance system reliability and safety are provided, (3) the operation and maintenance procedures are established based on a risk-based consideration, and (4) useful information is given to the development of basic policy on safety design and evaluation of a large LMFBR. 

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