Safety practices professional development

Roger L. Brauer and Steven Schoolcraft, International Professional Safety Practice A Comparison with U.S. Practice, Presentation No. 607, Proceedings, American Society of Safety Engineers Professional Development Conference, June 2008. 

The AcuSafe website provides a comprehensive electronic newsletter entitled AcuSafe News. Their newsletter is devoted to serving industry, government, and interested members of the public by providing process safety practices, incident news, lessons learned, and regulatory developments. Hazard View is a source of advice, comments, and information about major accident hazards in the process industries. It is for safety, environment, and risk professionals. Their View Library has a number of vivid images of the damages from accidents. [1]... 

There are two significant thought processes, one built on the other, of which knowledge is a requirement in professional safety practice. They are Haddon s unwanted energy release concept, extended by him to include exposures to hazardous environments, and the concepts on which MORT (management oversight and risk tree) was developed. 

Systematic Occupational Safety (Practical MORT) 5-day versions taught to DOE, NASA, DOD, and private industry 1-day version conducted as professional development seminar at National Safety Congresses... 

The Scope and Functions of the Professional Safety Position issued by the American Society of Safety Engineers (1998) says that the s ety professional is to anticipate, identify, and evaluate hazardous conditions and practices and develop hazard control designs, methods, procedures, and programs. Those are valid statements. 

Increasingly employers are demanding a high level of professional competence in their safety and health advisers, calling for them to hold recognised qualifications and have a wide range of technical expertise. These are evidenced by Chartered Membership of the Institution for which proof of a satisfactory level of academic knowledge of the subject reinforced by a number of years of practical experience and skills development in the field, assessed by an Initial Professional Development (IPD). 

The contributions are based on research carried out at universities and other research institutions, and on practical studies developed by Occupational Health Safety (OHS) practitioners within companies, This book will help to get acquainted with the state-of-the-art within the above mentioned domains, as well as with some practical tools and approaches that are currently used by OHS professionals in a global context. 

Executive or, for example, by the British Standards Institution. What this means is that in relation to that particular risk, or array of risks, the Commission has approved, with the agreement of the Secretary of State, a way of dealing with the particular problems. Failure to comply with a Code of Practice could be used as evidence that all that was reasonably practicable had not been carried out, and in that case the onus would fall on the accused to show that their measures were either as good as the Code of Practice or better. This is, of course, quite convenient and useful for large companies who are in the forefront of developments in health and safety. They can develop a system that at least does what is immediately required by the law and develop from there. But, nevertheless, there are many smaller industrial concerns which find it difficult to decide exactly what they should do, and the concept of what is reasonably practicable is not much help to them. The Health and Safety Executive produce a fair body of detailed requirements which, given some guidance, the smaller firms and less professional or less expert people will be able to follow and should keep them free from health and safety problems. 

Geller, E. S., How to sustain involvement in occupational safety from research-based theory to real-world practice, in Proceedings of the 2000 ASSE Professional Development Conference and Exposition, American Society of Safety Engineers, Des Plaines, IL, 2000b. 

Surveys of professional lawn chemical applicators were conducted during the summer and fall of 2004. Subjects recruited included participants in Ohio State University s OARDC (Ohio Agricultural Research and Development Center)-sponsored turf care professional educational seminars (Northeast Ohio Lawn Care Seminars). Approximately 300 professionals attended these events (held at the Wooster campus of Ohio State) to inform practitioners of best management practices, new technology, and health and safety issues. Participants included those who own and work in the lawn care industry in Ohio, spanning companies from small, one-person owner operated firms to large franchised national outfits. Professionals attend these seminars for purposes of certification participation in the survey was optional. 

As previously stated, the American Chemistry Council also recognizes this concept as an integral part of the code of Responsible Care , Process Safety Code of Management Practices, Companies should openly share nonproprietary results from internal process safety incident investigations and related research through the auspices of trade and professional associations, and other networking opportunities. Other organizations should strive to benefit from the lessons learned by others and keep abreast of latest developments and safety alerts. 

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