Targeted Hazard Identification System

The Targeted Hazard Identification System (THIS) is specifically designed to enhance employees ability to recognize and target safety and health hazards in the workplace, which in turn enhances the company s proactive approach to the prevention of costly occupational injuries and illnesses. The THIS also provides an easy and cost-effective way for employees to communicate their observations of safety and health hazards in the workplace to other employees and management. 

The THIS will focus an employee s attention on these targeted hazards through an intensive 1-hour training program that the safety and loss prevention professional will present, and the basic skills will be provided upon completion of the THIS observation cards. The premise is simple—stop the unsafe act to prevent the accident from happening. 

The THIS program consists of four simple steps that employees can complete easily in less than 2 minutes  

It is vitally important that the representatives of management acquire the completed THIS cards from the workstations on a daily basis and provide feedback to the employees completing the cards. This feedback can be in the form of daily notices on the workstations or bulletin boards, among other methods. 

To identify workplace hazards, communicate with employees and management, and correct all hazards BEFORE accidents can occur. 

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One of the new creative ideas to promote employee involvement and the expression of their ideas is the targeted hazard identification system. This system provides an easy and cost-efficient method through which employees are trained to identify safety hazards in their workplace and provides a mechanism through which the hazard can be corrected. Additionally, this system provides a simple method by which employees can express their ideas and acquire feedback within a 24-hour time period (see Appendix C for program details). Important components of this program are the anployee involvement and the acquisition of their opinions to generate corrective action. 

The instructor should introduce him- or herself and explain the meaning and purpose of the Targeted Hazard Identification System (THIS), focusing on the proactive activities of the program. The instructor should place Overhead 1 on the overhead projector and review each objective for the THIS training program. 

Hazard identification consists in identifying the type and nature of adverse effects caused by the agent in the receptor (target organism, system, or (sub) population). 

Hazard identification is the first stage in hazard assessment or risk assessment, which consists of identifying substances of concern and the adverse effects they may have on target systems under certain conditions of exposure (OECD/IPCS, 2001). 

The design of most process plants relies on redundant safety features or layers of protection, such that multiple layers must fail before a serious incident occurs. Barrier analysis ) (also called Hazard-Barrier-Target Analysis, HBTA) can assist the identification of causal factors by identifying which safety feature(s) failed to function as desired and allowed the sequence of events to occur. These safety features or barriers are anything that is used to protect a system or person from a hazard including both physical and administrative layers of protection. The concepts of the hazard-barrier-target theory of incident causation are encompassed in this tool. (See Chapter 3.)... 

The assets and infrastructure identification assessment can be a very time-consuming process but is necessary to adequately identify the school s infrastructure. This information is used to target efforts on those systems and assets that are necessary to best protect the students, staff, and other individuals located within the school. When this information has been collected, the assessment team should focus on the execution of an inclusive threat and hazard assessment. 

The analysed system is not a uniform system it is different in many aspects at different locations throughout Europe. At the time of the project, three different technical solutions, each with several variants, were planned to suit the diverse needs of national railways as well as the varied financial potential of various EU member states. Nevertheless, it was necessary to define the system to facihtate identification of the generic hazards resrrlting in a common, universal set of safety targets. 

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