Posts Tagged ‘ in the workplace ’

10 Top Reasons Why We Implement OHSAS 18001

ohsas-18001-certificationI remembered when my company finally decided to be certified by Occupational Health and Safety Assessment Series (OHSAS) 18001 in year 2004. Actually there were some reasons that forced the Board of Directors took this step. I believe the reasons can be considered by other companies, which are willing to adopt OHSAS 18001 as their health and safety management system.

Here are the top ten reasons why implementing OHSAS 18001 would give companies more value and benefits.

  1. Meeting customer’s requirements, especially the customers which have been implementing OHSAS 18001
  2. Attract more companies to deal with the company
  3. Fulfill stakeholder’s satisfaction.
  4. Ensure the company to meet legal and regulations on occupational health and safety
  5. Improve the quality of workplaces
  6. Improve company’s health and safety performance
  7. Prevent company to pay unnecessary expenditures
  8. Enhance company’s image
  9. Enhance company’s commitment to continuous improvement on health and safety matter in the workplaces.
  10. Maintain company’s business survival

If your company is now considering adopting OHSAS 18001, take action now. These reasons are more than just enough.

Recommended Free eBook

ohsas-18001-free-ebookIf your company is in the process of implementing the OHSAS 18001 or needs more information about OHSAS 18001, download this free ebook and learn about the latest information about OHSAS 18001 as the Occupational Health and Safety Management System (OHSMS). Click here to get this OHSAS 18001 free ebook.

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Hazard and Hazard Recognition Methods

hazard-recognitionBy definition, a hazard is anything that has the potential to cause harm to people, damage to property or environment, or loss to process. OSHA defines hazard as the potential for harm that is associated with a condition or activity that if left uncontrolled can result in injury or illness. Meanwhile, according to OHSAS 18001:1999, hazard is source or situation with a potential for harm in terms of human injury or illness health, damage to property, damage to the workplace environment, or a combination of these.

Hazard recognition or hazard identification is vitally important in accident prevention. By recognizing hazards’ characteristics and properties, we can clearly determine proper controls. Unfortunately, the majority of us sometimes overlook to recognize hazards.

Hazard Recognition Methods

There are many hazard recognition methods. The more hazard recognition methods we know, the bigger our chances to recognize all hazards that exist in workplaces. A hazard might not be identified by a certain method, but it can be detected by another method. Principally, we need to assure that hazard recognition is completely done.

The following are the most useful hazard recognition methods:
1. Pre-Use Analysis
2. Multi-Step Planning Process
3. Work Permitting
4. Equipment Inspections
5. Suggestion Method
6. Walk through Safety and Health Audits
7. Safety Patrol

Now, lets talks about these methods one by one.

Pre-Use Analysis can be applied before any new equipment, device, instrumentation, personal protective equipment, machine, tool, plant facility, etc are used. This method is applied before exposure to hazards.

Multi-Step Planning Process is applied before hazard exposure and applied to every task, job and activity. To apply this method simply asks a series of questions before doing the task, job or activity. The question should be similar to:
a. What am I going to do?
b. What is the purpose to do this job, task or activity?
c. How will I do that job, task or activity?
d. How could I get hurt doing this job, task or activity?
e. What will I do to prevent accident (injury, illness health)?

Work Permitting is issued before the job, task or activity done. Some questions asked and a checklist shall be completed to assured that hazards are not overlooked. Commonly, including in the checklist are analysis of toxic gas (such as carbon monoxide), oxygen sufficiency, flammable gas concentration, etc.

Equipment Inspection is implemented to any equipment before it is used or put into operation. Equipment inspection is planned and organized to check overall equipment conditions, safety protective equipment, guarding, emergency stop, etc.

In Suggestion Method, every worker is encouraged to propose or suggest potential hazard (and control) that are contained in a job, task or activity. Workers consider their past time experiences on the shop floor and field to give suggestion and this is very good safety habit. This method can be used for improving current hazard identification list.

Safety Patrol can be carried out by every worker in the plant site, not only by persons who are in charge of health and safety matters. Safety patrol may be done during an equipment running, plant operation, plant shut down or whenever it is intended to identify potential hazards.

The best way to use these hazard recognition methods is by combining these methods one with the others.

The next question is when is the right time to apply these hazard recognition methods? Of course before exposure to the hazards is the best time, because at that time no one was injured, ill or death, and no property damage. However, during a job, task or activity is being done hazard recognition is still important especially in accident prevention, and we can stop or cancel the job, task or activity at any time whenever we see a potential hazard to cause injury, illness health or plant facility damage.

Hazards may also be recognized after a job, task or activity has been completely performed and we can plan hazard control improvement to that job.

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40 Ideas for Safety Meeting Topics

safety-meeting-topicsSafety meeting is the right time to discuss about health and safety related matters in the workplace. Safety meeting can be held regularly or incidentally as a response on occurrence of a specific health and safety problem or after an incident or accident happens.

Ideally, safety meeting focuses on just one specific topic. But, what kind of topics do we have to discuss? Here are some topics that you can use in the safety meeting:

  1. Safety policy
  2. Applicable safety regulations
  3. Compliance status on safety regulations
  4. New safety regulation
  5. Incident and accident investigation
  6. Safety audit findings
  7. OHSAS 18001 surveillance findings
  8. Safety patrol finding
  9. Personal protective equipments
  10. Eye protection
  11. Hearing protection
  12. Hand and foot injuries
  13. Risk assessment for new plant facility
  14. On-way traffic control in the plant site
  15. Pressure vessel regular testing
  16. Working around electricity
  17. Emergency response procedure
  18. Construction safety
  19. Working in a confined space
  20. Lockout and tag-out programs
  21. Heat stress
  22. Hazards identification or recognition
  23. How to read Material Safety Data Sheet (MSDS)
  24. How to handle compressed gas safely
  25. Hazardous material preservation and handling
  26. Slips, trips and falls
  27. Near miss incident reporting
  28. Fire extinguisher usage
  29. Safety precaution in case of fire
  30. Maintenance of fire fighting equipments
  31. Safety control for the transformer yard
  32. Fire fighting placement and location indication
  33. Self-inspection system
  34. Chemical exposure control
  35. Safety training program
  36. Gas cylinder control and protection
  37. Hazardous material symbol and label implementation
  38. Loss control report issued by plant insurance company
  39. Safety work permit system
  40. Truck driver safety

It had better to provide schedule for every safety meeting, especially for regular safety meeting. Don’t forget to file them when you have finished using the materials. Later you will need those files.

I believe the list above does not cover all the chemical plant safety related topics. Your input and feed back would be very valuable and I will add it to the list.

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An Introduction to A 5-Minutes Safety Talk

free-safety-talks According to www.whscc.nb.ca, safety talk is a hands-on way to remind workers that health and safety are important on the job. While www.ofswa.on.ca describes safety talk as a brief meeting held on regular basis with workers and their supervisors to discuss problems and concerns about health and safety. Principally, safety talk deals with specific topic, subject and problem which are health and safety related in the workplace.

The objectives of a safety talk are to remind workers about potential hazards in their workplaces and help workers to recognize and control these hazards.

Safety talks are best delivered by people who are responsible for workers’ safety and health. They may be supervisors, health and safety officers, members of safety committee or anyone with health and safety duties. Even in some companies every worker is scheduled to give safety talk, in order to maintain safety awareness among them.

So what kind of message should we deliver during safety talk? Are there any standard messages? Basically there are no standard safety talk messages. As long as we choose a specific topic, subject or problem which relate to health and safety in the workplace, it will be enough. But the important point is safety talk message has to be well prepared, because it should be finished in about 5 minutes. Please check this page for safety talk example.

Now it is the time to set up safety talk schedule. We can perform it once a week, three times a week or once a day. It merely depends on company’s OHS policy, job risks, workplace conditions and worker’s skills.

Choose most appropriate location where we will do safety talk. Wherever possible, choose the real workplace, or at least as close as possible to the real workplace. For instance, if we would like to perform safety talk about confined space work hazards, do it at a tank, at an opened reactor column or near a vessel.

If possible use real tools, equipments, materials (for example chemicals), procedures and work conditions to demonstrate key points of the safety talk we are talking about, and to make it is easy to be understood.

Don’t forget to make a safety talk record. Record the date, location, leader, attendants and the topic. Make sure that all attendants have signed on the attendant list. Also make a copy of the safety talk material and keep it together with the records for future reference.

Finally, I would like to stress that although safety talks only take 5 minutes to finish, but it helps employers and workers to remind importance of health and safety, recognize and control hazards, and keeps workers awareness alive. Remember, there are much potential hazards inside chemical plant.

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