Safety programs program performance

The committee believes that the JACADS and TOCDF safety programs and performance have been and continue to be adequate to ensure that chemical demilitarization operations are being conducted safely. Even so, there is considerable opportunity for improvement. Many of the incidents that have occurred at JACADS and TOCDF could have been significantly mitigated—if not prevented—had a true safety culture been in place and functional at the time. 

Second, how do contractors develop and implement a system safety program to perform the tasks necessary to meet the government requirements ... 

Today s safety professional has moved beyond the standard measurement of safety performance in terms of the number of accidents or injuries and recordable injury and illness rates. More sophisticated techniques that involve safety performance measurement systems, ongoing tracking of results, and continual improvement processes have replaced the early measurements. While today s safety metrics still include accident and illness performance, they also encompass behavior-based safety, safety program implementation performance, and insurance costs and losses. 

Common measures for a safety program s performance are insurance expenses and losses. A cost that is often tracked by safety professionals is the organization s worker compensation premiums. Workers compensation premiums can be calculated in a number of different ways. However, regardless of the method for determining premiums, they provide an excellent indicator for safety performance in the workplace. 

A properly written HASP should contain worker health and safety program information, guidance, and alternatives. The HASP should quickly answer the following questions What hazards are present and How can we make sure that the tasks will be performed safely The following general guidelines will help to answer these questions ... 

NOTE Contractors unable to meet host organization requirements for accident rates or experience modification rates may submit a written safety enhancement program designed to bring project performance in line with host organization requirements which will be implemented for all work done for the host organization. If approved by the host organization health and safety professional, the safety enhancement plan will become part of the contractor s job-specific safety plan and the contractor may be approved. 

Individual Plant Examination Program Perspectives in Reactor Safety and Plant Performance, 1996. 

Perhaps, even more important, is the stagnation in our safety and environmental performance in the last five years. Until five years ago, we had seen dramatic year on year improvement in every aspect of safety and environmental performance. This has slowed down in all areas and ceased altogether in occupational safety. I expect that these changes will invigorate all our programs. Our current safety and environmental performance costs us at least 30 million each year in avoidable costs such as capital damage and clean-up costs. If we could put a dollar value on injuries to our work-force, the savings would likely be ten times this amount. 

Improvements in safety and environmental performance will come only slowly. Major accidents are rare, even with poorly managed programs, and any reduction in these will be evident only after several years. Areas where early improvements might be expected are spill response and occupational injuries where improved processes should be effective soon after installation. Work place exposure and environmental emissions may improve over a period of several months. 

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. 

The PSM Standard is a performance-oriented standard that requires the employer to prevent catastrophic releases from covered processes by executing a 14-element safety program. All processes with highly hazardous chemicals are required to have a management system that addresses each element of the standard. 

Edkins GD. 1998. The INDICATE safety program Evaluation of a method to proactively improve airline safety performance. SafSci 30 275. 

Metrics should relate to the elements of the process safety system. Poorly selected metrics that do not specifically relate to the execution of process safety elements will not provide an accurate evaluation of process safety system performance. Occupational injury and illness reporting rates are sometimes used to judge overall safety performance, and this metric does track the incidence of employee injuries quite well. However, this rate does not reflect the effectiveness of the process safety system. Occupational safety is quite important to the health and well-being of employees, but the metrics involved in assessing the occupational safety performance are not appropriate for process safety system evaluation the detailed elements of a process safety program differ markedly fl-om an occupational safety program (as discussed in Chapter 3). 

Some metrics, such as number of fires or number of process safety incidents, may individually portray the performance of a process safety program. Other metrics may have information that is valuable but requires an understanding of the underlying meaning of the metric. Examples may include ... 

Frequency of required waivers of qualification requirements for past safety performance or current safety program X... 

Contractor Safety programs have been in existence for many years, but the PSM Standard required that the program become formalized and more far-reaching than traditional contractor safety programs. The Contractors [29 CFR 1910.119 (h)] element requires that those considering the use of contractors must partially base their selection of a particular contractor on their safety performance. Covered process owners, once they select a contractor, must ensure that not only are the employees of the contractor qualified to do the... 

As part of operational management, a procedure should be developed for qualifying carriers. Carrier selection should include regulatory compliance, safety programs, security, and performance, with qualification based on the following steps ... 

The information derived from reports of transportation incidents provides an excellent outcome measurement of the performance of a company s transportation safety management program. Information about the causes of transportation incidents not only provides the basis for proper corrective actions, but also provides useful lessons for the future, which can lead to improvements in the transportation safety management system. 

Mitretek. 2001. D. Tripler, K. Raghuveer, R. Rhoads, A. Amr, and J. Miller. Independent Evaluation of die Rapid Response System, Safety and Environmental Performance, Mitretek Technical Report MTR 2001-22. Aberdeen Proving Ground, Md. Program Manager for Chemical Demilitarization. 

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