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

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...

As we know usually there are two types of monitoring .i.e. Active and reactive. Audit or checking of the health and safety standard is active monitoring system and it is better than reactive because it is working before things go wrong. CHASE stands for Complete Health and Safety evaluation is used as an audit and evaluation system within the organisation as a part of active monitoring (It is a type of Data base management system). It was originally designed for health and safety audit evaluation tool , is now widely accepted in other area of loss like quality, environment etc. CHASE initially developed as a MS-DOS audit manual in 1980. However it is now available in Window format with hand held device for collecting the data. CHASE fits into health and Safety Management standard as below : BS 8800- CHASE fits into measuring performance and auditing aspect. OHSAS 18001- CHASE fits into Checking and corrective action. Key Features of CHASE are as ...