Why the Need for Safety Management Plan Template?

For a company actively engage in the field of construction, construction management usually involves various phases of work like planning, designing, budgeting, implementation and safety. In most cases, safety is given less attention as more effort is exerted on how to decrease expenses and finding ways to meet target dates of completion. The worker sometimes gets the work done by shortcut which occasionally puts his safety at risk. Whether the job is simple and can be completed in a short period, is not enough reason to waive creating a safety plan. One can never tell what will happen in the future. While it is true that there are so many available downloadable Safety Project Management Plan templates, it is not always a guarantee that simply filling out the template can make your company compliant. An organized system is to implement and manage the plan is crucial. With the tightening demands of regulatory agencies to craft an effective safe system in your work, more companies have increased their awareness on the need to invest and support their safety management plan.

As reiterated, crafting a safety plan is significant tool in doing business and should not be taken for granted. If you have sincere desire to take care of the safety of your workers, then you need to decide on that plan. There is a variety of information that needs to be considered depending on the actual conditions in the job site. It is not a one man's job as the intention to cover all important safety aspects that are typically needed in doing the work. Besides it might be more practical to generate your plan using a template to save time in drafting and the chance of missing out important details. A simple template usually contains some basic parts like Policy Statement, Safety Rules, and Investigation Processes among others. Make certain that the information you will provide is correct as this will become a communication tool to workers. It would make the job of the safety engineer or the officer in-charge easy.

For large scale projects, there is more relevant information that must be included in the plan depending on the kind of work environment. The Safety Plan is a comprehensive document that may require some time to create. Better be safe than sorry and lose money in the end. It is considered a major accomplishment on the profile of any company to achieve a Zero Man-hours lost to accidents. This record will definitely look good on your next project bidding.

Guide to a Safe Work Place

Maintaining a Safe Workplace is as important as running a successful business because unless you have a safe working environment, you are hardly likely to see any progress. It is a manager's job to see that all security measures are adhered to in order to keep accidents at work from occurring. Besides this, accidents can cost you a lot of money and even the loss of a day's work. It is therefore essential that you have a safe workplace that is free from any kind of health hazard, as this will keep your employees happy and they will perform better at their jobs.

It should also be noted that you alone as a manager cannot bring in all the changes or take the entire responsibility of creating a safe workplace. You will need to involve your employees to help you preserve a safe and healthy workplace. It is they who can identify and inspect hazards so that they can be avoided. For this, you may even require a training process that will help employees recognize any discrepancies that may arise due to bad equipment or machinery or any other thing that might cause health hazards. A manager should be friendly and be able to relate with the employees so that they can without any hesitation report their problems directly. A common perception that employees have is of not being able to level with their peers or seniors. This is the very notion that you need to get out of their minds by being open to their suggestions and even including them in your policies that are made for managing a safe workplace. However, running a safe workplace must begin with you and it is you who has to set the goals for the others to follow.

The very first step to avoiding accidents at work is to formulate a policy that emphasizes the benefits of a safe workplace. You must give your full commitment and expect the same from your employees. Also insist on getting to the root cause of any accidents at work so that they can be prevented from being repeated again. Assign someone who will be accountable for maintaining a safe workplace and ensure that the person understands his or her duties well or you could hold the person responsible for negligence.

The safety of your employees is of vital importance and is also their legal right. You must therefore have provisions in your safety policy that any employee exposed to health hazards at the workplace or injured in an accident at work, shall be compensated for it. You may have to pay for hospitalization or even an operation. Occupational therapy is also a good way of checking on the mental, physical and psychological well being of your employees. The need for introducing occupational therapy is being widely seen by entrepreneurs and small businesses as well.

Occupational therapy uses consequential occupations to encourage good health thereby helping people improve their work performance and do their jobs in a more balanced way. As a manager you must be able to recognize any problems that your employees may face and help resolve them and even recommend occupational therapy. Keeping a safe workplace that is free of health risks or injury is an absolute way of creating a happy environment and success for your business.

Project Management Made Easy

Complex projects require sophisticated software and scheduling tools, however simpler and more straightforward projects involving only a few people over a relatively short period of time require a much simpler approach.

Usually, a simple project management will have a few steps which are dependent on other steps taking place first, and will be relatively straightforward to coordinate. An example might be creating and implementing a marketing plan for a one person business, painting a single room, baking a cake, planning a weekend away for two, building a garden shed etc.

With simple projects, a tool such as a Gantt chart may make over complicate the project scheduling. Unless all team members are trained in the tool then the use of the tool may itself lead to poor communication and an unsatisfactory result. A simple project such as those identified above may only require a timetable and/or an action plan. All those in the project team should be communicated with as to their tasks content and timing. Timetables can then be negotiated and agreed; actions lists or diaries/calendars can be used for recording and planning purposes.

All projects have control points and required deadlines, where progress is monitored and measured. In the event that a deadline is missed then the overall impact on project completion time can be assessed, and if necessary new timetables drawn up, re-negotiated and agreed.

Action Plans are lists of tasks/individual actions that are carried out to achieve a single and objective or outcome - in this case, the specific project. Action Plans focus on the achievement of a single goal, the action may then be translated in to a to-do list/diary cum calendar which cover many goals.

Safety Management Series - Make It Safe, And Legal

In my professional OHS consulting practice I often see clients who have become frustrated by "chasing the regulations." Their desire to comply with the legal requirements is honourable and a very wise business choice. It also pays to make our workplaces safe and healthy for our valuable employees. This is especially true in our day and age of diminishing workforce, increased world competition and challenging economic times. A contracting company needs to stay sharp to survive.

Wanting to have a safe work method statements and to comply isn't enough; we need a strategy to make it happen. Here's what's worked successfully for many who realize that making it safe is only half of the challenge and making it legal is the second half.

Trouble is in almost all jurisdictions that I'm aware of, this act of driving through an intersection against a red light is not legal. Our goal in business is to do both.

Let's start with a simple process.

1) Find the harmful energies (Hazard Assessment)

Find the harmful energies that could cause you grief. Electrical, mechanical, chemical, kinetic, gravitational and stored energies are some examples of energies that can all find a pathway to us unless we ensure they are controlled. Being hit with unwanted energy is a sure fire way to get hurt or damage our equipment.

2) Put barriers in place to stop the harmful energies (Hazard Control)

Once defined, these energies can be eliminated or in some cases you can put barriers in place to ensure the energies don't hit us. For example, if I need to work in a trench, I'm concerned about gravity working on the stored energy of the trench walls. If I go into an un-shored/protected trench then I'm putting myself in the way of energy. I can control that energy by barriers. These barriers don't have to be physical barriers. I can use the barrier of my knowledge not to enter the trench. I can also get training to know how to build safe shoring. Shoring is a great example of a barrier that effectively protects us from harmful energy. I can also use a trench cage to ensure that if the walls of the trench do collapse that I'm safely inside the cage unharmed by the release of the potentially harmful energy.

3) Check the applicable legislation for details of the prescribed hazard controls.

So once I've looked at either eliminating the harmful energies or the barriers I can put in place, I will probably have made it "safe". To follow our trenching example I could decide to shore the trench with lumber and screw-jacks. This could keep me safe from cave-in. I could guess the size of lumber I need and the number of screw-jacks but I could guess wrong. My shoring design may keep the walls of the trench from moving in on me, but may not meet the requirements of the local OHS laws. This is where I need to go to the web to check the regulations or look it up in my OHS regulation/code book.

4) Check your industry for best practices.

In my research I should also look for industry solutions to my safety challenges. Why re-invent a trench cage when I can just go buy or rent one? What are others doing to make it both safe and legal? Industry associations focused on safety are great sources of solutions to my safety challenges. Use them relentlessly.

5) Develop the safe work process to be used.

Now that I've decided on how I'm going to do the work, I need to develop a work process so that when I do this kind of work, I and my fellow workers are protected by the process used.

6) Educate and train those who need to comply with the work process.

We all need to know what is expected of us and we should be trained to do the work we're assigned. Learning how to shore using the company procedure is a barrier to me and my fellow workers from being injured or killed in a trench cave-in.

7) Observe that the work process is being followed.

Now that we have a plan to enter trenches we need to make sure that we always do it safely, Workplace inspections and observations tell us that we're doing it right. The old quality adage "Say what you do, do what you say and measure often" works really well in safety. Not only will you be ensuring you are following your own rules, but you will be meeting the legal requirements.

When we do it right we need to tell everyone that they've done a great job! If we need to adjust our processes, now is the time to do our improvements. Well there we have it, a simple process to make it safe...and to make it legal. Hopefully this will reduce any frustration you have around meeting the details of the OHS management plan regulations. Don't miss a step, your employees and your company's well-being is relying on it!

SWMS Works

Employers or on-site managers must be confident that a Safe Work Method Statement is set for all high-risk actions and tasks before employees are allowed to carry out any kind of work. Experts agree and highly recommend that all Work Method Statements be kept on-site so that they can be quickly delivered to the site without any problems or hassles.

WHAT DOES AN SWMS CONTAIN?

Most people do not really know what an SWMS covers. All they know is that it is a document that helps to promote occupational health and safety. However, this document is clearly more than that. A Safe Work Method Statement must:

• Identify the work or activity that is considered "high-risk" or dangerous

• Clearly state the hazards that are related to the high risk task

• State out what kind of effect those hazards can bring about to a person's health and safety

• Describe what measures should be used to control the risks

• Describe how the risk control measures should be carried out, monitored and assessed.

Besides the aforementioned information, a Method Statement or an MS should also include the following:

• The PCBU's (Persons Conducting Business or Undertaking) name, address and ABN (optional)

• Names and details of the persons who are assigned to perform the high risk task.

• Name of the main contractor

• The site or location where the work is carried out

• The date the MS was prepared

Make sure all information that is stated or included in the SWMS is stated in a clear and straightforward manner. It should be easy to understand and accessible by all workers and on-site supervisors. The MS should not only include a list of safe work practices but also enough information on how to implement the risk controls for a particular task or activity.

WHO BENEFITS FROM AN SWMS?

Initially, only those who are involved in the construction industry benefited from having a Safe Work Method Statement. However, over the years, other businesses and industries started creating their own MS as well. This is hardly any surprise since there are certainly risks involved regardless of the industry or business you are in. There are certain health and safety regulations that must be complied in order to guarantee complete protection for the workers at all times. Companies can create their own SWMS; however there are firms and agencies that also specialize in creating customized Method Statements for a specific field or work.

Effective and Efficient OHS Management

I believe that most folks are well-intentioned when it comes to the health and safety of themselves and others. I've never actually met anyone in any company during my over three decades of OHS management plan experience who actually wanted to hurt anyone. I think the problem is that some percentage of employers, managers and workers just don't know what activities they are to engage in to really make their workplace safe.

Knowing what to do and how to do those things that make a safe work method statements situation is a fundamental requirement of efficient and effective OHS problem-solving. Good problem-solving requires us to be both efficient and effective. A problem solved inefficiently only causes other problems. A problem solved ineffectively isn't really solved at all. There are only four possible combinations of being effective and efficient. You either are or you aren't. No matter what state you find yourself in, there are practical things to do to improve not only your results, but the processes you use to achieve those results. Let's examine the four states of OHS management and see what we can do to celebrate or correct our approaches so that we'll become efficient and effective at creating safety.

Effectively efficient: Doing the right things right

This is akin to driving a well-maintained boat with a super crew on board with a well-defined plan to get to the other side of the lake. We'll not only accomplish our goals, but we'll do it in record time with few problems, if any, to resolve along the way. The plan is solid, we have the right people in place, and we just need to execute the plan. Then, of course, we need to celebrate our accomplishment.

In managing OH&S issues, this means that your own evidence tells you that you are managing safety in a way that results in the creation of safety. You can see the evidence of safety when you look. Workers are working without taking unnecessary risks. You can observe workers following work procedures that they helped develop and are wearing proper protective clothing and equipment. The safety rules make sense to the people who need to follow them and the safety culture is observable. It feels good to be safe. Safety isn't a "program." It's the way that your company does its work.

Effectively inefficient: Doing the right things poorly

This is like owning a boat in very poor running condition, having one broken paddle as an emergency backup, with a great navigation plan to make it across the lake: "We'll get there... someday." We'll breakdown along the way, we may hurt some crew members because we don't have the proper tools to repair the boat, we may even get to the wrong point on the lake before we finally reach our correct destination. There could be some time wasted just drifting aimlessly. Team members will be unhappy and a tad frustrated. Success of getting to where you are going will be less than satisfying because of the negative experience.

In OHS management plan, we are often doing the right things to make it safe; we just aren't very efficient at them. We have safety meetings for example, but the participants think they are a waste of time since we're having very poorly developed meeting strategies. There are good things happening at the meetings; they just aren't happening quickly enough.

Ineffectively efficient: Doing the wrong things very well

In this state we're really good at what we are doing, we're just doing the wrong things. We have a great boat in great condition travelling in circles. We're randomly reaching unplanned destinations that we never really intended to go to. If we reach the goal, it will just be because of luck.

Unfortunately, companies stuck in traditional approaches to safety are in this state; they are very efficient at orientations, for example, but the process isn't getting the correct results. All their staff have watched the orientation DVD; they just haven't retained any of the information.

Another common example is passing the same audit annually for several years. Let's face it: you aren't learning much by asking yourself the same questions you asked yourself a decade ago, even if the audit is done in record time.

Ineffectively inefficient: Doing the wrong things poorly

This is akin to driving a motor boat with a poorly performing motor and no rudder on a lake. You will slowly and with a great deal of noise go around in circles...and never really get anywhere. If you do get to the other side of the lake, it could be the wrong destination altogether. If you happen to get to where you wanted to be, you'd have to admit to yourself that it was mostly luck that got you there.

This state of your OH&S effort usually presents some, if not all, of the following observable symptoms:

• No safety processes defined;

• Working on the typical myths of OHS management;

• We offer to fire people for safety violations, but don't tell them they are doing a good job when they do;

• We efficiently hold safety "telling" meetings where there is no interaction; and

• We have rules of safe behaviour but never actually check to see if they are being followed.

There are certainly other areas of concern with ineffectively inefficient management. The key is to find out from others the successful ways to get you out of this state. Remember that every company is in some state of your OHS management development and delivery evolution. Components of what you are doing to create safety may very well be in a variety of states of both efficient and effective.