Workplace design checklist

A detailed, specifically referenced design checklist covering all workplace safety needs would fill thousands of pages. The General Design Safety Checklist presented here is a brief composite derived from several sources. Some safety professionals will view it as excessive others will find that it does not address all their needs. Those who use it as a reference should be aware that there are many subject-specific and industry-specific checklists to which they should also refer. For example ... 

The ERNAP audits have been included here to provide examples of a checklist embedded in an audit system where the workplace is not the sampling unit. They show that non-repetitive tasks can be audited in a valid and reliable manner. In addition, they demonstrate how domain-specific audits can be designed to take advantage of human factors analyses already made in the domain. 

This checklist is an adaptation of information that appears in the ISO s Safety of Maehinery—Principles of Risk Assessment, Standard, IS014121. The checklist is a guide for companies located throughout the world who design and manufacture machinery and equipment that would go into European workplaces. Although the checklist pertains to a broad range of equipment, those who use it as a reference must understand that it could not possibly include all hazards and all hazardous situations. 

The checklist in Addendum B at the conclusion of Chapter 8 is adapted from ISO 14121, the Safety of Machinery—Principles of Risk Assessment Standard. It is to serve as a guide for those who design and manufacture equipment and machinery that goes into European workplaces. 

The checklist has been used as a design tool as well as an accident-investigation tool in cases where human errors have played a central role. It draws attention away from blaming the person that made the error. Instead, it focuses on the identification of dysfunctions in the design of the man-machine system from an ergonomics point of view. The intention is to identify accident-prone workplaces rather than accident-prone persons. 

Efforts should be made to simplify the form for the registration of accidents and near accidents as far as possible. It is an important principle that the design of the form shall not create a barrier towards the reporting and investigation of accidents and near accidents. Some of the data are fed directly into the computer and need not show up on the form for the supervisor s first report. No specific form is needed for the in-depth investigations. Checklists should be developed to support the investigations. There are also other tools to be considered such as checklists and record sheets for use in workplace inspections, risk analyses and SHE audits. 

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