Many organizations struggle to identify “safety metrics” besides their lagging indicators. But the PRCS article I posted Friday night contains at least a dozen metrics around our PRCS safety management efforts. There are a lot of “SIF salespersons” out there selling their “SIF approach.” On the other end of the SMS spectrum are the facilities deep into SIF; they just may not use fancy terminology and all the parading.
I grew up in the chemical industry, and as I have said before, process safety is a SIF approach to managing safety (vs. the OSH models) – giving LOW FREQUENCY/HIGH SEVERITY events much-needed attention. But as the great Todd Conklin recently said…
“Safety is not the absence of events; safety is the presence of defenses.”
My SMS approach to managing the HIGH RISK associated with Permit-Required Confined Spaces (PRCS) reflects this comment. From how we perform the initial evaluations to our auditing of the program, it is ALL ABOUT ensuring the work within the SMS is of good quality, done by competent personnel, and audited by a 2nd/3rd party to verify and validate the efforts.
