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11. SAFETY INSPECTION OBERVATION AND AUDIT
Safety Inspection
A routine, scheduled inspection of an Unit or Department which may be carried out by personnel within the Unit, possibly accompanied by some one from external. The inspection would check maintenance standards, employees’
involvement, working practices, and that work is carried out in accordance with procedures etc., rather than wide-reaching or in-depth approach taken in audit.
Safety Observations
Safety observation during execution of work at sites / Work places is a “Process”
in which the assigned Safety Personnel visit the work areas to observe implementation of Safety system in the work being performed. Ideally all work centres / sub centres shall be visited and at least 80% of the engaged workmen observed during a minimum of 2 hours duration. The safety observer notices the safe as well as Unsafe Acts, Conditions and work practices. He / She communicate with employees about his / her observations and safety aspects of the job. While he / she gives complements to the employees for the good work, their attention is drawn towards the Unsafe work, discusses the risk / hazard involved and severity potential, decides upon urgency of corrective action / work stoppage depending upon the severity, and also takes employees’ commitment to work safely.
A differentiation has to be made between Safety Observations and Inspection Observations, and the Observer must be unambiguously knowledgeable about it so that his/her actions are guided accordingly. Or else the very purpose would get defeated.
ISSUE
R2 During the Safety Observations people are observed, everyone is covered, observations are positive as well as negative, and the interactive discussion is followed by report generation and corrective / remedial action. This in contrast to the Inspection Observations where things are observed, the observations are only negative, only experts are talked to; the dialogue is passive and followed by report generation and corrective action.
Field Observation is another ‘term’ often used. Field observations are primarily for compliance, are on acts and conditions, involve only supervisors with passive dialogue, provide 80+ % coverage, followed by report. Safety observations are on people for preventive measures; involve everyone on 1 to 1 interactive training, generation of report and subsequent follow up.
The benefits of Safety Observations (field observations included) and feedback arising thereupon are:-
¾ Prevent injury and property loss.
¾ Reinforce positive safety behaviour.
¾ Raise safety awareness and reduces complacency about hazards.
¾ Establish Safety standards.
¾ Test understanding of safety standards.
¾ Test compliance with standards.
¾ Identify weakness in safety standards.
¾ Identify and correct unsafe situations / fix some hazard immediately
¾ Tips sharing between experienced and new people.
¾ Motivate people to use safe practice consistently.
Safety Observations could be categorised under the following (generally classified as six steps):-
¾ Reaction of people,
¾ Position of people,
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¾ Clothing and Personal protective equipment,
¾ Tools and Equipment,
¾ Procedures and Orderliness, and
¾ Ergonomics (repetitive motions)
When a personnel working unsafely is observed, the Safety Observer shall draw the employee’s attention. He / She shall primarily comment on the employee’s safe work, and then discuss the Unsafe Act, its possible consequences and safer way to do the job. He / She shall get the employee’s agreement / commitment to work safely in future. The observer shall also discuss other safety related issues, and then at the end express gratitude to the employee.
While discussing the Unsafe Act, the Safety Observer must express his concern, and focus on effect and not the act. All queries shall be framed to sound like exploring and learning, and definitely not like teaching.
Observation matrix
¾ First line supervision to observe employees of their own area 3 – 5 times per week.
¾ Team to observe each other in their own area 3 – 5 times per week, and Cross observation with other teams as required / requested.
¾ Mid-management to observe the first line supervision, team members and employees of entire area 1- 4 times per month.
Top management to
(a) Observe team members and employees of segments 1 - 4 times per month, and
(b) Mid-management of entire operation once per quarter.
ISSUE
R2 Observation information, reports and feedbacks can be utilized for assessing the personnel and the work they do, detecting developing problems (follow up and action), visualizing trends and reinforce positives.
Safety Audit
Safety audit is a technique to systematically appraise the effectiveness of a safety program under execution. This helps to improve and upgrade the existing safety program.
Safety audit is a methodology to critically evaluate safety program and performance in terms of accident frequency, severity rates, identification and control of hazards and assessment of financial losses on account of bad performance. Safety audit also helps to evaluate the overall quality and character of the safety program and its effectiveness.
Safety audit is meant to bring to light lacunae and lapses in the safety practices being followed so that ways and means can be found to initiate corrective measures to achieve better performance, efficiently and economy.
Types of Safety Audit
Safety audit can be internal or external based on whether it is carried out by a team of persons within the organization or by a team of experts from an outside safety / consulting organization hired for carrying out the audit.
Internal and External Safety audits have their own merits / demerits. In case of internal safety audit, information as necessary could be had due to close association with colleagues but there could be a tendency to protect person(s) responsible for deficiencies. In case of external audit, collecting the information is more difficult but the analysis is likely to be more objective and remedies suggested more realistic since the auditors are expected to be neutral.
ISSUE
R2 Safety audit can also be categorised as basic audit, self audit and professional audit. Basic audit means ensuring that all basic elements of the safety program are implemented including analysis of qualitative, quantitative, setup, procedures and controls, hazard identification education, training and maintenance of relevant records. Self audit involves analysis of elements such as leadership and administration, training, inspection procedures, inventory and job analysis of critical jobs, investigations of accidents / incidents, emergency preparedness, rules and regulations, group safety meetings and communication, community education and demonstration.
Professional analysis is essentially external audit by a professional consultancy organization. Professional audit involves analysis of various critical elements of safety program at micro level, such as health of safety program, health hazard control, personnel protection equipment, program evaluation system, purchase and engineering control, general promotion of safety awareness including training, display of audio / video cassettes etc., selection and placement of personnel to implement the safety program etc. Professional audit involves review of basic and self audits, safety programs, preparation of a questionnaire for the audit to be filled in by the industrial unit for which the professional safety audit is conducted, identification of vulnerable areas on the basis of the completed questionnaire, verification of information and clarifications obtained etc, analysis of information collected, arriving at loss indices, submission of report along with recommendations.
Safety audit, both basic and self, need to be conducted by in-house safety personnel on regular basis in order to assess the site situation, to facilitate taking corrective action / remedial measures to ensure safe working conditions, to exhibit management care and concern about them, and to keep their morale high.
ISSUE
R2 Measurement of Safety Performance
Safety performance of site is measured to improve processes and procedures being practiced at site. Following two methods have been adopted.