Safety Audits
"Audits measure how well
you are doing against your established goals and objectives. Audits are
critical to the success of your goals and objectives."
Safety Audit - Program Evaluation
A safety audit
evaluates safety programs and practices within an organization.
Employers conducting an audit should: Measure and collect information
about a safety program's reliability and effectiveness. Look at whether
a safety program meets the company's stated goals.
Safety Audit - Evaluate
injuries records, hazard records, safety management elements
Where have you been?
(Injury/illness records, hazard reports, safety management elements, written
programs and procedures) Where do you want to be? (reduce injury/illness by a
certain percentage, ensure all near misses are reported, ensure all hazards are
reported and fixed, implement safety management elements)
If you do not know where
you've been in the past or do not know where you want to be in the future, then
you won't know where to start or how effective what you plan to do or are doing
even is. You need to conduct an analysis of injury/illness, hazards, and
elements of Safety Management program.
Step #1-Determine where
you've been in the past. Collect
injury/illness records, reports of hazards by employees or teams, or known
hazards for your industry. Organize your information by departments or job
sites so you'll know where to focus your efforts
Step #2-Conduct a hazard
assessment. Develop a checklist of
hazards to look for and establish a matrix to evaluate the significance of the
hazards so you can prioritize solutions
If you/your team do not know what
hazards to look for then your first step will be to attend some hazard
identification training. You can't just rely on common sense to identify
hazards. You need to know some of the basic OSHA safety rules, so you'll know
what could cause accidents in your workplace
Conduct Self
Assessments/Bench Marking
- In order to get where
you want to go, it is essential to know where you are starting from.
- You can use a variety
of self-audit mechanisms to compare your site processes with other
recognized models of excellence such as SHARP sites or Star VPP sites.
- Visiting other sites to
gain first hand information is also invaluable.
- You can use perception
surveys to measure the strengths and weaknesses of your site safety
culture.
- These surveys can give
you data from various viewpoints within the organization. For instance,
you can measure differences in employees' and managers' perceptions on
various issues.
- This is an excellent
way to determine whether alignment issues exist and, if so, what they are.
One example is the Safety and Health Program Check Up.
- At this stage, it is
important to look at issues that surface as symptoms of larger system
failures. For example, ask what major system failed to detect the
unguarded machine, or why the system failed to notice that incident
investigations are not being performed on time, or if workers are being
blamed for the failures. Your greatest level of success will come when
these larger system failures are recognized and addressed.
Develop an Inspection Program
- To identify hazardous
conditions and employee behavior and determine what actions are required
to reduce or eliminate accident potential.
- Additionally,
inspections can help determine the extent to which employees adhere to the
company's safety program, operating procedures, rules and regulations.
- Developing a
self-inspection program and associated checklists can help to protect
company assets from fire, employee injury and injury to the
public.
- Their development will
require the attention of someone who has a sound knowledge of the
company's operations and as well as knowledge of relevant safety standards
and local codes.
- The self-inspection
program should be a process of fact finding with an emphasis on
identifying potential hazards and developing the necessary corrective
actions necessary to eliminate them.
- Routine site safety and
health inspections are designed to catch hazards missed at other stages.
This type of inspection should be done at regular intervals, generally on
a weekly basis. In addition, procedures should be established that provide
a daily inspection of the work area
You can use a checklist
already developed or make your own, based on:
~ Past
problems.
~ Standards that apply to your industry.
~ Input from everyone involved.
~ Your company's safety practices or rules.
Important things to remember about inspections are:
~ Inspections should cover every part of the work site.
~ They should be done at regular intervals.
~ In-house inspectors should be trained to recognize and control hazards.
~ Identified hazards should be tracked to correction.
~ Information from inspections should be used to improve the hazard prevention
and control program.
Need
help conducting your first audit?
Author:
Deborah Grow, Safety Specialist
Private
Safety Consultant, assistant Damon Fall Protection and Coordinator EHS Network
~ Kansas. Extensive safety
experience in General Industry, Construction, D.O.T. Compliance, and OSHA
consultation project. Contact Deborah if you would like to schedule a
consultation
