SAFETY MANAGEMENT

Safety management is defined by as a function that enhances company performance by

predicting operational, procedural or environmental risks and threats before they occur. Safety
management is a strategic process that identifies and addresses safety issues for employees and the
company.

Safety management is applying a set of principles, framework, processes and measures to

prevent accidents, injuries and other adverse consequences that may be caused by using a service or a
product. It is that function which exists to assist managers in better discharging their responsibilities for
operational system design and implementation through either the prediction of system’s deficiencies
before errors occur or the identification and correction of system’s deficiencies by professional analysis
of safety occurrences.

Safety management implies a systematic approach to managing safety, including the necessary
organizational structure, accountabilities, policies and procedures. Aside from being a pre-emptive and
preventative process, safety management also corrects deficiencies and performance errors.

A Safety Management System (SMS) is a systematic approach to managing safety, including

organizational structures, accountabilities, policies and procedures. An SMS is scalable so it can be
tailored to the size and complexity of the organization.

Role of management in industrial safety

• State the worksite safety and health policy clearly so all personnel can understand its
importance in relation to other organizational values.

• Establish and communicate the goal. Objectives should be clearly defined so all levels of
personnel understand the desired results and the required measures to achieve those results.

• Involve employees in decisions that affect their safety and health. If involved, employees will
likely commit their insight and energy to achieving the program’s goal and objectives.

• Provide visible top management support. Visibility gives employees the sense that the top-level
management cares and is truly committed to the safety of the employees.

• Assign and communicate responsibility to all personnel levels. Everyone should know what
performance is expected and the consequences if performance levels are not achieved.

• Give those assigned responsibilities the authority to act on situations that affect the goal and
objectives.

• Hold employees accountable to meet their responsibilities so that essential tasks will be
performed.
 • Review the safety program periodically to evaluate problems within the program and revise the
objectives if the goal is not met.

• management commits itself to occupational safety and health as a core value of the
organization and communicates this to the employees

• Managers have an accurate picture of the risk profile of the organization

• Management leads by example and demonstrates leadership integrity, for example, by following
all occupational safety and health rules at all times

• The roles and responsibilities of different actors in preventing and managing health and safety
risks at the workplace are clearly defined and planned and monitored proactively

• OSH (Occupational Safety and Health) can feature in the company’s sustainability and/or
corporate social responsibility strategy and may be encouraged throughout the supply chain.

Principles of safety management

• Safety is an important management function of every organization (like production, marketing,

finance, planning, etc. ). The company must have a written safety policy. Management must
take up the responsibility of implementing the safety policy.

• Accidents are caused by unsafe acts and unsafe conditions. The unsafe acts and unsafe
conditions are due to the lapse in safety management.

• Behind one accident, there are several chance misses.

The accident is culminating effect of multiple causes. One root cause and several supplementary
causes.

• Unsafe acts and unsafe conditions can be identified in advance and can be eliminated at the
root.

For example, a bare live conductor can be replaced by insulated cable. Oil filled transformer can
be replaced by dry resin cast tr4ansformer.

• For achieving ultimate safety, each link in the safety chain must be healthful. A weak link makes
the whole safety chain weak.

• Safety management systems and human resource development (HRD) in safety are the tools of
every organization for ensuring safety. The employees and contractor’s labors must be trained
to follow the safety management system.

• Safety is a line function as well as a matrix function.

 A line function means along the hierarchical line of authority in the organization. Viz.,
manager—supervisor—worker, each is responsible for the safety in his work and the area and
follow safety down the line.

Matrix means as a network of authority with interaction between departments on horizontal

and cross basis

• Bad work harms others. Harmful results of unsafe acts or unsafe work has consequences which
are experienced by subsequent users down the line. The culprit may not even aware of his
mistakes leading to the accidents in the future. In the case of civil design, if the material used is
not fire resistant, a small spark may cause a large fire.

• Unsafe acts or unsafe work today may result in a disaster after a lapse of time. The defects of
civil construction work may result in larger destruction during fire in some corner of the building
during life entire span of the building.

Role of safety committee

• Report unsafe conditions and suggest corrective actions.

• Meet at least monthly; less frequently for smaller departments or operations, but at least be
quarterly.

• Clearly define the duties and responsibilities of officers and members.

• Review incidents, near misses, Supervisor’s Accident Investigation Reports, claim summaries and
loss analysis on a periodic basis.

• Review all serious injuries. Not for faultfinding, but for fact finding to prevent a re-occurrence of
the same or similar incident.

• Contribute ideas and suggestions for improvements in safety.

• Work safely and influence others to work safely.

• Make periodic facility safety audits.

• Sponsor and coordinate contests, poster programs, safety drives; etc., and supply other
informational materials which can help to promote safer operations.

• Develop, implement, and review written safety programs.

• Build enthusiasm for safety programs.

• Direct involvement with organizational wide safety training.

• Establish dispute resolution procedures.

 • Propose and create safety checklists.

• Identifying high-risk job tasks and developing written safe operating procedures

Hazard Identification, Evaluation, and Control

• Review injury data, accident reports, and workers’ compensation records.

• Conduct regular walk around inspections to identify potential health and safety hazards.

• Conduct safety and health job analyses to identify problems.

• Design and conduct health and safety surveys.

• Collect and review Material Safety Data Sheets (MSDSs).

• Propose and evaluate various ways to improve safety conditions.

• Get recommendations acted upon.

• Review and evaluate corrective actions taken by management.

• Temporarily “shut down” unsafe operations until a hazard is corrected.

• Collect and review information on new chemicals, procedures, and processes before they are
introduced.

• Participate in studies conducted by outside researchers or consultants.

• Establish or improve procedures for employees to report safety hazards or suggest

improvements without fear of reprisal.

Information and Education

• Respond to concerns raised by workers, supervisors and managers.

• Recommend training for new employees, supervisors, and managers and refresher training on
health and safety practices, procedures and emergency response.

• Plan and organize training programs.

• Establish or improve procedures for employees to report health symptoms without fear of
reprisal.

• Keep workers, supervisors, and managers informed about the committee’s activities.

Accident/Incident Investigations

• Investigate accidents, including their root causes.

 • Establish procedures for reviewing reports of all safety incidents, including accidents, illnesses
and deaths.

• Review accident/incident reports and make recommendations for appropriate corrective action.

• Develop systems for reporting accidents and “near misses.”

Safety and Health Planning

• Establish procedures to review inspection reports.

• Recommend and track new safety and health rules and work practices.

• Review proposed equipment purchases and make recommendations.

• Regularly review and evaluate the employer’s Injury and Illness Prevention Program (IIPP).

• Develop a tracking system that enables the committee to monitor progress on safety issues.

Formation of safety committee

• Determine the Structure of the Safety Committee.

Some consideration should be given to the structure of the safety committee. Employee
wellness can be included in the responsibilities and duties of the safety committee, or the
Wellness Committee can work in combination with the Safety Committee. The Wellness
Committee can address concerns of employee health and wellness.

• Determine the Optimal Size of Your Committee.

Determine the ideal number of people to be part of your Safety Committee. If you are forming a
joint labor management safety committee, keep in mind the importance of maintaining an equal
balance in the number of the representatives from each group. Remember to include
representatives from the various departments and work groups. If you elect to utilize the All-
Employee Safety Meeting method, then this criterion is unimportant. A target of five to ten
committee members is usually a good-sized group.

• Determine Who the Specific Committee Members Will Be

You may elect to hand-pick the specific employees that you think would make good Committee
members. You may also choose to issue an open invitation to employees and supervisory
personnel to ask for volunteers to join the Committee. Either way, your goal is to have a group
of individuals that can work together as a team, and who are willing to do what they can to
promote safety in your workplace. Depending on the response to your invitation, you still may
need to invite specific individuals to join the committee. If the response is high, then you may
 need to maintain a waiting list. It is a good idea to periodically rotate members on and off the
committee, to help to prevent burnout and to keep fresh ideas and energy flowing through the
group.

• Top Management Involvement

You need to provide top management support to the safety committee, so that all employees
will understand that your commitment to safety is a serious one. If you chose to be a member of
the committee, then you should remember to encourage all members’ involvement in the
discussion of safety issues and concerns. Should you elect not to become a member of the
committee, and then you should attend the initial meeting and visit periodically after that. You
should also review the meeting minutes and make yourself available to respond to questions
and concerns from the committee. Most importantly, management must establish the authority
of the committee and then support it.

• Conduct the Initial Safety Committee Meeting

The first meeting should cover the following items:

• Welcome members to the Committee

• Set a schedule for the committee to meet (for instance, the first Tuesday of every
month at 2:00 p.m.) that is as convenient as possible for all members

• Determine who will be the committee officers--Chairperson, Vice-Chairperson, and

Recorder or Secretary (you may wish to have temporary officers until the committee has
met at least a couple of times)

• Discuss the duties of the committee and determine which duties should initially receive
the highest priority. Some examples would include conducting facility selfinspections,
developing required written safety programs, and conducting Incident/Accident review.

• Determine the need for sub-committees to take responsibility for some of the priority
items. If sub-committees are formed, their work on projects can be advanced by
meeting between the full committee meetings. They can then report on their progress
at the next meeting of the larger group. This should also facilitate keeping the length of
the full committee meetings to an hour or less.

• Review the Progress of the Committee at Least Annually

Each year the safety committee’s progress should be reviewed in order to evaluate the group’s
success in helping the organization to meet its safety goals and objectives. This will allow both
progress and deficiencies to be identified so that the committee’s efforts can be further refined
as necessary to allow the organization to continue to make progress toward an accident-free
workplace.
Loss control

Loss Control is any intentional management action directed at the prevention, reduction
or elimination of the pure (non-speculative) risks of business. To achieve a high level of loss
control, management must identify all areas where such losses can occur and manage the
control of these losses. This can best be achieved by the implementation of a formal loss control
programme.

The scope of Loss Control is extremely wide, encompassing not only the concerns of
safety and health, but also, among others, production and inventory control, transport, fire
protection, security, product liability, personnel management, and even insurance.

The programme could be widened in the area of damage control to cover not only
damage caused by accidents, but by various types of deficiencies in purchasing, operation, and
maintenance, as well. At the same time, a number of people recognized the disadvantages in
having various control functions managed by separate sections or departments, with little
communication between them. Thus, the idea evolved that a company should have a single,
integrated programme to reduce types of non-speculative risks. This concept was termed Total
Loss Control because of the wide scope of application.

But the work "total" was later discarded as researchers found that it encouraged the
misconception that all losses should be controlled, or totally eliminated. With regard to the
problem of securing the interest of top management in safety, the idea was that injury
prevention would be "sold" to management as only one part of an integrated package of cost
reduction measures.

Before looking at the basic features of the Loss Control approach to accident
prevention, it is necessary to dispel a common misunderstanding about what a change to this
approach would involve. Because the scope of Loss Control is far wider than that of injury
prevention, it is sometimes mistakenly thought that the difference in the two approaches lies
essentially in the scope of the responsibilities of the Loss Control Manager, compared to those
of the traditional Safety Officer, and in the types of incidents that will be reported to him.

For instance, some people understand that when a firm changes to a Loss Control
programme, the Safety Officer, who changes his title, is simply put in charge of other functions,
such as security, fire protection, and so on, in addition to safety, and receives reports on a wide
range of incidents that are not restricted to accident problems. In that event, safety, for
instance, would be managed in about the same way as it was before, but would simply merge
with other functions into a single department.

It is important to realize, however, that this is a serious misapprehension that switching

to a Loss Control approach involves making significant changes throughout the organization,
affecting the duties and accountability of line personnel, company selection and training
policies, measurement techniques, management style, and approaches to employee motivation.
 Productivity, Quality, Reliability and Safety theory (PQRS)

Productivity

Productivity is the measure of the efficiency of a person, machine, factory, system, etc., in
converting inputs into useful outputs. Productivity is computed by dividing average output per period by
the total costs incurred or resources (capital, energy, material, personnel) consumed in that period.
Productivity is a critical determinant of cost efficiency.

Productivity is a measure of the efficiency of a company's production process; it is calculated by

measuring the number of units produced relative to employee labor hours or by measuring a
company's net sales relative to employee labor hours.

Productivity is the key source of economic growth and competitiveness. A country’s ability to
improve its standard of living depends almost entirely on its ability to raise its output per worker, i.e.,
producing more goods and services for a given number of hours of work. Economists use productivity
growth to model the productive capacity of economies and determine their capacity utilization rates.
This, in turn, is used to forecast business cycles and predict future levels of GDP growth. In addition,
production capacity and utilization are used to assess demand and inflationary pressures.

Quality

Quality is a degree of excellence where those features of products which meet customer needs
and thereby provide customer satisfaction.

Reliability

Reliability is the probability that an item will perform a required function without failure under
stated conditions for a stated period of time.

Safety and Quality

There are products that are very safe to use and of high quality. As well as products that are
unsafe and high quality and every other combination. In general, the safety features of a product work
best when of high quality.

A table saw blade guard of poor quality may reduce safe operation by jamming or fracturing. A
well designed and constructed guard would provide the saw operator protection while enhancing the
cutting operation.

A product that uses poor materials or highly variable assembly processes increases the number
of defects present. A product that does not operate as expected may increase the safety hazards. And
vice versa.
Safety and Reliability

As with quality, at first glance these two concepts are independent. Yet, if the safety features
wear out, degrade, or fail during operation, that may create unsafe conditions, when initially the system
operated safely.

Also, if a product fails, in some cases it causes an unsafe condition. For example, if a fuel pump
for an aircraft engine fails, the aircraft may lose the ability to continue flying safely. The fuel pump may
be of high quality and designed to operate safely, yet due to wear or another failure mechanism, fail, it
changes that system’s ability to safely operate.

One way to improve the reliability of a fuel pump and engine system is to increase the weight,
complexity such as redundancy or increases component robustness. With the improvement of system
reliability the system safety also improves, yet the increased complexity may decrease the system’s
ability to function as expected (quality).

Quality and Reliability

Quality professions tend to consider reliability as one of many quality aspects of a product. In
general a poor quality product tends to be unreliable and likewise, a well designed and crafted product
tends to be highly reliable too.

A product that experiences failures, especially partial system failures or specific component
failures may lose the ability for specific functions. The system quality is degraded. In some cases a single
failure mechanism of one component shuts down the operation of at the product (Loss of a power
supply prevents the use of a desktop).

Some teams argue if a specific failure is related to quality or reliability issues, yet for the
customer it really doesn’t matter, they lose the ability to use the product. This is where reliability and
quality overlap as the traditional aspects of quality (design features, process control, etc.) when not
performed well, leads to product failures, which reliability engineers may work to prevent or minimize.

The ability of an organization to create quality products that are safe and reliable often relies on
the management team establishing clear intent with consistent follow though. Every product has these
three aspects, whether deliberate or not.

SAFETY ORGANIZATION

Mission accomplishment requires an orderly pursue of the objectives. Organization,

administration and management usually distribute assignments for achieving these objectives
systematically. Organizing means structuring of authority and activity relationship using the resources at
hand. Administrating is different from managing. Administrating means carrying out all the functions of
planning, organizing, co-coordinating and measuring involving variety of people. The administration may
employ specialists. Managing as a function is much more than administrating. It is more related to
leadership requirements for effective managing.

RESPONSIBILITIES

It is heresaid that "safety is everyone's responsibility". It might be true, in general but is grossly
misleading. Because most functions in modern society are fulfilled through an organizational hierarchy
the responsibility for safety of others significantly increases. Therefore an organization has to have long-
range objectives and one such operating objective is safety.

The main reason for status of safety on par with quality and production arises due to not only
injuries but the valuable loss of time of productive work, damage to property, compensation to injured
persons, etc. The organization should regard a provision of safe working condition and the
establishment of safe work practices as fundamental to playing their part in the fair and co-operative
relationship with labour and society.

After laying down the adequate safety as one of the prime requirements, the next responsibility
of the organization is to appoint a chief executive to carry out the mission for safety by achievement.
Alternatively, the new concept in industry is to appoint a risk manager who usually deals with insurance
contracts to cover the loss possibilities. Safety and health programmes may be his responsibility.

In any factory none of the operations of designing of a process, machines, jigs and fixtures will
be considered complete and ready for use, until it is clear that the operation will be safe to the worker
involved and will not constitute hazards to other employees. This introduces, part by part,
responsibilities of production, maintenance, design, research purchasing departments related to their
functions.