The death of Georgian luger Nodar Kumaritashvili at the beginning the 2010 Olympic Games was tragic. Even though most workplaces are clearly not the same as an Olympic sports facility, there are “lessons to be learned” from this tragedy for occupational health and safety professionals. Arguing whether the individual hurt was at fault is not productive. As the Georgian President Mikheil [...]
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OHSAS 18001 requires that your organization’s procedure for hazard identification and risk assessment take into account “human behavior, capabilities and other human factors”. Many organizations partially address this requirement by establishing an ergonomics program in order to address physical human factors. Only a few organizations explicitly address mental human factors as a part of their [...]
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I have been working for over a year with a project team developing a strategy for improving a management system process that is of great importance to that organization. It was a major effort that culminated in a presentation to the executive management team. They loved it. That should be great – right? Well… The problem with [...]
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The start of the New Year is good time to pause, reflect and clean out. Many organizations use the start of the year as a time to review their OH&S management system objectives and set new ones. If their OH&S programs are lagging in their implementation, new approaches or new assignments are considered. This is [...]
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One of the key requirements of the OHSAS 18001 standard is establishing a procedure for taking corrective and preventive action (section 4.5.3.2). Both corrective and preventive action need to include identifying the underlying causes – often called root causes – of whatever it is that is or went wrong. This is not easy. Often, the [...]
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Section 4.5.3.1 of OHSAS 18001 requires that OH&S incident investigations “be performed in a timely manner”. So – What is Timely? Neither OHSAS 18002 nor the dictionary (my primary sources for interpreting the OHSAS 18001 requirements) provides much help. OHSAS 18002 does not explicitly discuss this particular requirement of the OHSAS 18001 standard. The dictionary [...]
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One of the signfiicant tasks associated with implementing any management system is managing information – typically lots of information. Usually, way too much information. As I discussed in a previous post – Data Sprawl – Not Just an IT Problem, the fact that we are now managing “virtual information” leads us to believe that the [...]
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A reader recently asked – Why is that OH&S management system manuals so often repeat the language of the OHSAS 18001 standard – isn’t that redundant? Yes and No.
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This week I had the opportunity to attend and give a presentation at the NIOSH NORA Health Care and Social Assistance Sector Council Meeting in Washington DC. It was the first NIOSH NORA meeting I have attended and I found the discussion both very enlightening and somewhat scary. At this meeting I gave a presentation [...]
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What do the National Mall, my homeowner’s association and your OH&S management system have in common? The need to pay for preventive maintenance. When we moved to Florida, we purposely choose to live in a neighborhood that did NOT have a golf course, community center or jointly owned “common areas.” Instead, we choose a neighborhood [...]
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