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!

Tips for Personal Work Safety

There are a number of personal safety concerns that can be forgotten on the job site. These may not be life or death matters, but you should at least do what you can to make them non issues. It is generally a simple process that can be carried out at a low cost. Then again, the Internet has made just about everything possible at an affordable rate.

Let's start with safety from the sun. This is obviously not an issue for most serious office workers. Just don't let your employees stand in the window for 5 hours and make sure blinds are available. Those with work outside need something that's a little tougher on the sun's rays. The easiest way to protect them is by purchasing and outfitting them with individual sunscreen packets. These are exactly what they sound like, just little packets of sunscreen that can be broken out quickly, used, and then disposed of. They have a lot of benefits. Specifically, they are needed for most serious operations. A communal bottle of sunscreen may work for a family at the beach, but it will not work for most job sites. It will be lost or misplaced and a bunch of people will go home with sunburns. Factor in the increased risk for skin cancer and you have a problem. Just buy the packets and make sure that each worker has one.

Clothes are another issue for safety and general neatness. Working clothing needs to be given for many positions in factories and general care. You don't need someone wearing sneakers and street clothes while they're working on heavy machinery. You should make sure that your employees have appropriate boots and jumpsuits. The boots are pretty easy. The jumpsuits aren't much harder though. Just order some nice material sets from a supplier. It's hard to be specific. Some need heat resistant suits while others just need suits that are tough against oil. It's your call in the end.

Finally, you will want to ensure that safety glasses are available. There are a number of situations that require such glasses. Many chemicals are bad for the eyes and a stray splash could cause serious damage. Good safety glasses will shield the eyes and ensure that it's just a minor incident. Safety glasses also work to protect the eyes from debris, so any serious construction or manufacturing work will probably need these to be standard issue. Use this tips as a safe work method statements. I hope this works a lot on you.

Make a Construction Environmental Management Plan Quickly

In the present world, where environmental concerns are a subject for governments and civil bodies alike, it may be a shock to discover that many building sites do not even have a functioning construction environmental management plan. Even where the plan is mandatory, construction companies can create plans which are simply unsuitable, and can never be properly implemented in the work site. Because most construction environmental project management plan template designs are so expensive, construction site owners think that they can save money by creating their own. However, the plan they end up with can be wrong, badly designed, or never even used.

Another reason why most construction environmental management plan folders are never looked at by the builders, and not implemented by people working at the site, is because it has been written in complicated styles which are difficult to follow, or contain information which is not suited to the current project's situation. Because these flaws are in the construction environmental management plan template which the writers used to create the document, it is difficult for expert consultants to work out what to include, and what to throw away. This leaves the construction site with a massive folder that cannot be read easily, and does not deal with the environmental issues for the site under consideration.

Creating a construction environmental management plan is not easy, particularly when you consider all the things that have to be included in the design of the plan for it to be effective. Writers must start with a road map - that is a plan of the topics the plan will discuss, the method of implementation, and which staff will be responsible for what elements of the plan. Then the writers must describe how each part of the plan will be performed, with evaluation of each part of the plan, and including details of staff training, documentation, and auditing. Then the writers will consider the Environmental impact, and any legal or governmental obligation. The plans must also include specific requirements which each construction needs, and the forms and records which will have to be produced by this. This policy will then have to be read by everyone working on the site, with proper training being given.

Rather than waste your time by trying to research all this by yourself, it makes more sense to download a construction environmental management plan template, which can then be used to form the basis of the plan which will be used by your construction site. Building the plan up can be done very quickly, in much less than a working day, and the plan will then be ready to implement.

Safety Management Series

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 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.

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 OHS management plan 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.

If you find yourself in the effectively efficient state, then please keep doing what you are doing. Continue to strive to do the right things right. Start to measure not only your activities to make it safe, but the outcomes of those activities. Make sure you celebrate your successes. If you find yourself in the effectively inefficient state, then work on your processes. Refine how you are creating safety by reducing unnecessary steps in your plans and procedures. Engage the people that actually do the work to help you define the steps to efficiently get things done. If you find yourself in the ineffectively efficient state, stop the focus on how you are trying to create safety and think about what you are doing and why you are doing it. Challenge your current practices. Look for evidence-based solutions. Ask yourself why you are doing what you are doing. If you find yourself in the ineffectively inefficient state, then just quit - just kidding! Immediately start with finding out what to do, then think about how to do it in your culture. The road to excellence will be hard work, but rewarding.

Remember that every company is in some state of your OHS management plan 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.

Ingredients to Effective Contractor Management

If you want to effectively manage workplace compliance, you need to manage your contractors’ compliance. No matter how robust, comprehensive or proven your OHS management systems maybe, if you have a non-compliant, or poorly trained, contractor onsite, it could all amount to nothing if an incident occurs. A reliable contractor management system has to be an essential part of any OHS management plan.

The five essential ingredients of an effective contractor management solution are:

1. A reliable contractor induction system

2. The ability to upload, track and manage compliance related documents

3. Comprehensive reporting capabilities

4. A reliable management plan

5. A dedication to making it all work!

Let's look a bit more closely at these five points:

1. Reliable Induction: While most companies have a contractor induction system in place, it is often out-dated, unreliable. How many companies still throw a handbook at their contractors, or stick them in front of a DVD and get them to sign a form? The fact is, if you track your contractor inductions or your contractors comprehension levels, you're doing very little to improve safe work method statement and nothing to improve compliance. Your first step in contractor management has to be inducting contractors through reliable, induction software with the capability to track inductions, measure comprehension and notify you when an induction needs to be renewed.

2. Capturing Relevant Documents: Insurances, licenses, company details they all need to be captured and checked before contractor even steps onto your site. Once you have them, they need to be managed so that when they expire or become outdated, you are automatically notified. You can then make sure they are renewed before you allow that contractor onsite again. You will also have a record of your activities to help ensure your company's compliance.

3. Comprehensive Reporting: The ability to report up-to-the minute activity associated with your contractor management is at the heart of demonstrating your commitment to safety. It provides you with the information you need to understand the strengths and weaknesses of your contractor management system and sets you in the right direction for continual improvements.

4. Management Plan: Simply having a system in place is not enough. You need to have someone to oversee and monitor how well it's working and leading the charge for continual improvements. If you are building a system in-house, this means assigning someone to oversee the software development and maintenance. If you are outsourcing a solution, make sure you find a company that actually understands, and is dedicated to, the everyday issues of OHS managers, not just a software developing company.

5. Dedication: Without an organization-wide dedication to making the system work, your contractor management solution can fall apart very quickly. At every level, you need to build an understanding of why an effective contractor management system is important and what the benefits to the company are. In most organizations, there are many people involved in the implementation of your OHS management systems. It is likely that they haven't placed much importance on your contractor management in the past. You'll need to make an effort to change that.

Once you have your system in place and have established an understanding of the real differences it can make to your company, a fully functioning contractor project management plan template system has the power to improve workplace compliance and, more importantly, contractor safety.