Traditional Safety Programs

Most companies have embraced the following programs and initiatives to improve compliance with safety procedures  

All these procedures are important to a successful safety process. Done properly, these elements contribute to good safety performance. But today, these elements define average safety efforts— they are what everyone does. If a company does them well, it will achieve an average level of safety for the industry. Although the rate of injuries will be affected by the consistency of these efforts, the result will basically be normal variation above and below the industry average some years better than average, some years worse. 

Values-Based Safety Process Improving Your Safety Culture With Behavior-Based Safety, j 

Second Edition Terry E. McSween Copyright 2003 John Wiley Sons, Inc. ISBN 0-471-22049-3 

Consistent safety excellence requires far greater consistency in how safety is managed than most companies achieve through traditional methods. Research by Du Pont and others suggests that 80 to 90 percent of today s incidents are a result of unsafe acts rather than unsafe conditions. Thus, very few companies that focus on the latter achieve consistently high levels of compliance with their safety procedures. 

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Behavior-based safety is commonly called behavioral safety. Behavioral safety is not an alternative to traditional safety programs it is one component of a comprehensive effort. 

Traditionally safety programs dealt with the physical environment. Later we looked at management and attempted to build management principles into our safety programs. Today we recognize the need to look at the behavior environment—the climate and culture in which the safety system must live [2]. 

In each of the cases described below, the companies had previously used the elements of traditional safety programs. In one example of improvement, on changing in 1980 to a behavioral approach, a major U.S. drilling company reduced its Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) recordable injury rate by 48 percent and moved from the industry average to being one of the industry s top five safety performers. This improvement was achieved through a management-driven behavioral approach even without the levels of employee involvement typical of current implementation efforts (Fig. 1.1). 

Figure 1.8 presents data from a plant with safety teams involved in a continuous improvement effort. Managers and supervisors also participated, and these teams were given responsibihty for continuous safety improvement in different work areas of the facility. The graph shows the success of these teams and the characteristic cycle of injuries that invariably prompts renewed safety improvement efforts. In some cases, such cycles are simply normal variations that characterize companies using traditional safety programs. In other cases, the variances correlate with inconsistent levels of attention being paid to safety. 

Analysis of traditional safety programs. Pinpointing behavior. Our values... 

Another important misunderstanding that leads to the failure of health and safety systems is that major elements of traditional safety programs often do not work as assumed. Hansen concluded that research conducted by NIOSH indicated that many traditional safety program elements did not correlate with safety effectiveness and results in terms of safety incidents. These traditional safety elements include ... 

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... 

In lieu of the traditional safety and loss prevention incentive programs, some professionals have tested new and innovative methods of motivating their employees ... 

In a traditional System Safety program, much of this information is found in or can be derived from the hazard log, but it needs to be pulled out and provided in a form that makes it easy to locate and use in operations. Recording design rationale and assumptions in intent specifications allows using that information both as the criteria under which enforcement of the safety constraints is predicated and in the inevitable upgrades and changes that will need to be made during operations. Chapter 10 shows how to identify and record the necessary information. 

Additionally, traditional occupational and industrial safety methods should be employed to identify and control construction and manufacturing hazards associated with the project. For the remainder of the life cycle, system safety efforts are complemented by existing occupational, industrial, or operations safety programs. 

A contracting effort may become an element in a system safety program in a number of ways. Tradition al system safety efforts have virtually all involved... 

Employee involvement offers many advantages over traditional management practices and can be instrumental in the success of your safety program. 

Vehicle inspection and maintenance is an integral part of your overall safety program. And although traditionally considered a cost center, having an efficient, detailed, and proactive vehicle... 

Traditional Driven Safety Program "Safety Cop" The way that I have always done it."... 

We hope that you have learned what it takes to develop a successful safety culture. We have defined a safety management system and how existing safety programs can be integrated into the safety process. The question is, has the recent interest in safety management systems created a new role for the safety professional, or is it a continuation of traditional past practices— doing it the same way that we have always done it ... 

We discussed Heinrich s theories and where they had an influence on the traditional safety practices. His theories have endured to the present day as one of the foundations of safety management. They were scientific and documented a specific approach to hazard recognition and control programs. His bottom-line theories saw employees, rather than their working conditions, as the primary cause of accidents. 

The paradigm shift that The Baker Report helped bring about was an understanding that process safety requires its own management systems and that they do not necessarily correlate closely with traditional personal/occupational safety programs. In its ten key findings, the report uses the term process safety seven times. 

Inq)rovement (HPI) have heai advocated for use in safety programs for a numher of years. Human performance is defined as a saies of behaviors carried out to accomplish specific task objectives. HPI enqthasizes principles and activities designed to reduce the potential for human oror. Many of these have been used in some form in many safety programs. But it is the underlying research and stmcture that differentiates an HPI approach from traditional safety. 

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