Health and Safety, NEBOSH, OSHA, IOSH, HSE.

What are the government/ global agencies enforcement initiatives on organisations for reporting an accident/incident? What are RNOAD 1996 and RIDDOR 2013? Duty of Care should be exercise at workplace by both Employee and their Organisation. Employee should obey the norms developed and implemented for health and safety. Similarly organisation should provide explicitness / clear cut health and safety procedures, training on these procedures, review for any gaps in the implementation, review to update the procedure and records keeping. Consultation and communication of procedure before and after development is necessary. Similarly need arise for recording, reporting and investigation of an accident/ incident/ disease happened at workplace while doing business by Organsiation to show duty of care, legally compliant etc. Employee should be aware for; in case any reportable accident/incident/ disease (Dangerous occurrence/ fatal/lost time injury) occurred during business then who wil...

What is the relation between incident reporting and The Occupational Safety and Health Convention, 1981 (No.155)? Which Recommendation supplementing OSH Convention 1981 requirements? What is the role of International labor organisation? Health and safety is a global concern and it requires global support for improvement. So in continuation of same International labor Organsiation (ILO) put pressure globally on its members for improvement of health and safety. So they developed with the help of their tripartite members “The Occupational safety and health convention, 1981 (No.155)” to improve health and safety standards. ILO, being tripartite (Mix of government, Trade union and Organisations) working under United Nation has force to provide the desired improvement in the field of Health and Safety. The main function of ILO is to provide conventions and recommendations related to human rights including health, safety, welfare etc. For the sake of health and safety , I...

What are the types of formula used to compare Health and Safety Performance? Which statistical techniques occupiers can use to analyze accident/incident and ill health?  Is Incident analysis required to compare organisation Health and Safety Performance? You cannot manage, what you cannot measure (.i.e. Peter F Drucker). So measuring health and safety performance is vital for any organisation, country so as to take decisions for further improvements and find the gaps in the existing efforts. Measuring health and safety performance should be quantitative wherever possible. This can be made easy with the help of different formula used by countries like US and UK (HSE and OSHA) to compare health and safety performance. Types of formula used to compare health and safety performance differ from country to country.  However below mentioned formula are common while doing comparison of health and safety performance among country, organisation, states, within ...

What is Violation? What are the types of violation? Mention few examples of types of violations? Violation defined as willful act which is against the rules, norms, standard etc. done by individual worker to complete the task like maintenance, inspection, driving etc. Sometimes these type of violation lead to incident at workplace. Individual involved in the violation injured himself and sometime his act injured others. Violations usually done to complete the task assigned to worker in convenient manner. Maximum time violation done to complete the productivity task . Violations found very common among those who are local residents to the plant premises in comparison to those who are living far from the plant premises. Also violation done by workers as they are not aware of the consequence and they are unaware about the benefits of doing job safely. Violation can be reduced considerably by the way of imparting awareness about health and safety significance, sharing about the con...

What is Human error in accident? What are the types of failure? How accident at workplace happened due to human error? Human error means deviation from set of prescribed actions intended to perform by the worker at workplace for his job results into accident/ incident. Human error can be related with the human behavior. Identification of human error, corrective and preventive actions for mitigating human error can help to reduce the accident / incident at workplace. There are broadly two types of failures .i.e. Active and Latent. Active failures mean failures done by individual worker or operator . These types of failures are direct cause of the accident/ incident and consequence can be seen immediately after the failure. Few examples are as below: Incorrect selection of tools, Wrong switch operated, Over speeding, Fail to isolate the equipment at workplace during maintenance job lead to accident/ incident. ...

What are the key causes of Accident? Who are responsible for preventing accident at workplace? Three key categories are important when we are talking about causes of accident. First cause is Human error, second management failure and third one is lack of Government initiatives. These all three are responsible for preventing accident. Their roles are different however depend on each other. Human error usually understands as a fault of an individual and accident considers to be happened due to his negligence. However this is not the correct answer. Human error can be due to poor ergonomics, due to fatigue at the job etc. Poor ergonomics means poor workstation design or improper good fit between individual and his workplace. Fatigue can be reduced by job rotation, automation of the job, workplace design sometimes also helps in reducing the fatigue. Many examples are present which directly indicates accident happening due to human failure. Some examples are Bhopal Gas Trag...

What are accident causation theories? What is Domino theory? What are other theories about accident causation? Accident caused due to some failures existed at workplace and causation theories indicate those failures. Like maintenance failure, system failure, machine, individual etc. So ultimately it helps us to identify the key elements need to be taken care of to prevent the accident in future. Key accident causation theories are as below: Pure Chance theory, Bird’s accident triangle, Domino Theory, Energy transfer theory, accident proneness theory. Among these theories Domino theory is renowned one . Domino Theory This theory was developed by Late H.W. Heinrich (Herbert William Heinrich) in 1931.He was an American industrial safety pioneer from the 1930s. He was an Assistant Superintendent of the Engineering and Inspection Division of Travelers Insurance Company when he published his book Industrial Accident Prevention, A Scientific Approach in 1931. O...

What is accident? What are the benefits of Accident investigation? What are the common errors we do post accident?  Is accident investigation an active monitoring or reactive monitoring? Unexpected and undesired event lead to injury or illness to an individual is an accident. An event that results into injury or ill health (Provided in HSG245). At workplace while performing task by an individual either due to his own unsafe act or by others or due to existed unsafe condition undesired outcome is an accident. Also energy from the process equipment like conveyor belts, pulleys, vessels etc. flows in wrong direction and interacts with human (workplace worker etc) results into accident and ultimately injury. Post accident errors done by organisation : -           Forget to report or hide the accident leads to probability of recurrence. -           Manipulation of the site cond...

What is CPD? Why CPD is essential for any Health and Safety practitioner? What are the ways by which H&S practitioner evaluate and develop his own competence? CPD stands for continuing professional development. This is a type of action plan for growth of individual during his employment by way of identifying gaps in skills and action plan to improve those skills. It is true that always we cannot rely on individual expertise based on his education only. Today’s world is continuously changing world and every day we can see change in technological aspects related to health and safety.  Also same time H&S practitioner has to advise bottom line, middle line and top management personnel on H&S matters and this certainly make it essential for him to be updated and develop technical and personal skills. As time passes if individual is not in touch of his specific education theoretical and practical application of the same then there is a probability of loss of his exper...

Independent, competent (by virtue of skill, knowledge, education and training) professional to promote health and safety without involving into any other function within the Organisation is the key role of health and safety practitioner. Many industries appoint safety professional for compliance purpose and leave all safety related matters of the organisation on him. That is really sad because H&S practitioner is advisory role and he should advise the line team, management on below matters rather than performing line team responsibility in managing health and safety: 1-       Advise on Risk management (Identification of hazard, risk assessment and control measures following hierarchy .i.e. Elimination, Substitution, Engineering, Administrative and PPE). 2-       Health and Safety Training to all concerned. Technical trainings like Electrical safety etc. should be provided by line team including electrical department i...

There are three (03) significant key parts of Health and Safety policy . These are as below; 1-       Statement of intent which describes the intention of top management by assigning one of the accountable people from board to sign the H&S Policy and also policy should be updated . It means how they (by top management) are going to manage health and safety. It also clearly indicates their intention to follow the local, national and international regulations of Health and Safety. Clear cut good practices for managing health and safety .i.e reasonably practicable. Duty of care by both .i.e by organisation and by employee so as to achieve zero harm. 2-       Organsiation . Responsibility and accountability allocation. Who will do what? Organisation contains Monitoring and measurement part. Formation of safety committee, Rescue teams, fire fighting team, Emergency handling and key members’ role, nominated health and...

Turnbull Report 1999 (Originally known as  Internal Control: Guidance for Directors on the Combined Code) Health and Safety management was found to be one of the greatest weaknesses of the companies before 1999 because they were found to be focused on making monetary benefits. That is why finance was the primary importance area for any organisation while doing business. This report was made by Nigel Turnbull of Rank group plc for listed companies in London . This report was primarily focused on financial aspects and drafted to show the directors obligation to catch the business Fraud. However this reports also mentioned the weak internal controls related to health and safety management and its direct impact as a business risk. This report was set of combined code for companies’ directors. Importance for H&S : Turnbull report clearly mentioned about the similar gravity/ importance for health and safety management in the organisation like for Finance and other dep...