Safety Management System

This article is in line with this week’s [My] Safety Thought of the Week (Manage Safety the same as Quality).  I hope to explain the 3-5-year plan I offer clients who have decided it is time for a formally structured management system to manage the risks their workers face.  It is a quite simple plan…...

I have discussed this approach before but think it is worth repeating. In our SMS/Safety Process, we need to view the men and women who do our dirty and dangerous work as our “customers,” just like we view our business customers through the lens of our Quality Management System (QMS). Imagine the outcome if we…...

Imagine trying to build a house today without the proper tools, such as a hammer/nail gun, handsaw/power saw, and tape measure. These are obviously critical to the task being done WELL and EFFICENTLY. Sure, we could build a house without them, but would it be one we would buy and put our family in for…...

In a mature Safety Process/SMS these four (4) elements play a critical role in delivering VALIDATED data to management so that the data can be analyzed and properly responded to in order to INTERVENE in the conditions/actions/attitudes BEFORE an event delivers undesired consequences. The late great Trevor Kletz said it best three decades ago in…...

Any safety pro who is also a parent will know exactly what I am discussing with this week’s rant. As parents who are leaders in safety, we have all seen it and experienced it firsthand throughout our careers. Every child will be different (even within the same family and home environment), as will every facility…...

All this talk about “Sh_t That Can Kill You” (STCKY) and focusing on those Low-Frequency, High-Severity risks is just one of the current safety fads. I like SIF, and if you really think about it, SIF and Process Safety are very much aligned. But I have never understood why it needed to be its own…...

In my experience, I have come to understand two (2) SMS/PSMS elements need to be first in line for development and implementation, as these two (2) elements are critical in the early days of developing and implementing a formal/structured SMS/PSMS. What would your two (2) elements be? My two are:… Membership Required You must be...

Many safety pros struggle to get management to understand the “indirect costs” of accidents. This is a real cost to the business, but those outside our profession are so far outside that they struggle to grasp the “indirect cost.”  Heck, many fail to grasp the “direct costs” since they do not come out of their…...

For me, SIF is just using Process Safety Management (PSM) tools for lower-frequency, higher-severity events, whereas traditional “recordable injuries” can be managed with the traditional Safety Management System (SMS). But here is the catch… the consequence may be more severe (serious), but the failures that led to those consequences can all be traced back to…...

Heinrich did not blame workers for accidents—quite the opposite. He was more in the camp of Latent Organizational Failures, as James Reason taught us in the 1980s. In this passage from his 1928 article “The Origin of Accidents”, Travelers, we can see his position on accidents on full display… Remember, he said this 96 years…...

Recently, I had the pleasure of touring the flagship facility of one of my original supporters of SAFTENG. The safety pro is a world-class leader and a fine safety engineer. When he arrived at this facility, he and the PM decided to rid the workplace of all the “safety banners.” Most had become eye-sores, some…...