Health safety management system

Every activity little or major one on a workplace is a part of health and safety management system. Whether displaying signage or investigating major accident, these are all parts of Health and safety management system. Your workplace HSE safety management system should be strong enough.

Nebosh IG1 syllabus is 45% based on health and safety management. Whether it is auditing, proactive monitoring or reactive monitoring, Health and safety policy, permit to work, safe system of work etc. All these topics are directly linked to Health and safety management system. If this topic is well covered and well understood than half of your IG1 preparation will be covered as well as will help you in the workplace.

As per ILO and OHSA’s Health and Safety Management should go on in a cycle.  i.e. PDCA cycle.

 

Plan: You will have to plan Health and Safety Management System.

Do: You will have to implement Health and Safety Management system.

Check: Then you will have to check if that system you developed whether or not is effective.

Act: If not effective than you will have to make amendment, adjustment and this cycle goes on.

Parts of Health and Safety Management system:

The Health and Safety Management System should be prepared before any project starts. Everything you want to include in Health and Safety e.g. Risk assessment, workers surveillance, accident investigation, developing permit system, time to time consultation with workers, frequency of consultation, workers training, inspection of the power tools using in the workplace, developing effective health and safety policy, carrying out safety committee meetings, health and safety induction trainings.

All these should happen before the project start.

There are six parts of Health and Safety Management system

The first part of Health and Safety Management System is Policy.

Now what is policy?

Policy (plan): List of declarations and commitments by the employer regarding health and safety

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The Policy is some kind of declaration and commitment from the employer that employer is going to implement at the workplace for the betterment of the workforce.

Policy is like a book where employer declared and needs to write down every detail what he is going to do by taking into account Health and Safety.

For example: The country where project is going to start requires internal audit of the company twice a year and external audits once a year. Employer can write it down in his policy i.e. Every year External Audit will be carried out or two internal audits will be carried out every.

If the country law requires that every new activity that is going to commenced at the workplace, risk associated with that activity will be properly and thoroughly assessed and control measure will be implemented. Employer will have to write it down in his policy.

Organizing:     Distribution of roles and responsibilities.

With the health of health and safety professionals, health and safety engineers, health and safety officers, employer assign duties. E.g. in the first section i.e. in  policy, employer declared that risk assessment will be carried before every new activity. Now in second section i.e. Organizing, employer will explain who will be responsible for this or responsibilities is assigned in this section.(responsibilities will be assigned by designation not by name as employees keep changing while designation remains the same).

In this section everyone from MD to worker will be assigned duties and responsibilities

• Who will investigate an accident?
• Who is responsible for risk assessment?
• Who will carry out induction training?
• Who will purchase, supply and issue PPE’s?
• Who will arrange consultations?

Planning and implementing(Do):  identification and implementation

In this section employer and safety department plan to implement what is declared by the employer in policy and where duties are assigned i.e. in the organizing.

i.e.

The project will now going to start, responsibilities are assigned and implemented.

Evaluation (check): monitoring and reviewing the effectiveness of arrangements put in place.

In evaluation you have to set back and evaluate in the management system which is developed. (finding out the loop holes, where are the loop holes in the system).

This can be done actively and reactively (e.g. by reviewing accident and ill-health statistics or actively by reviewing inspection reports)

Action for improvement:  updating and reviewing the policy and health and safety management system

Any shortcomings and loop holes identify by the review process (evaluation) must be correct by making adjustments, updating and reviewing the policy and health and safety management systems.

Continual improvement: the safety management system will be continually improve, it will not remain static and changes will be made where appropriate and useful.

Audit:  systematic examination of the SMS to ensure that all parts are working properly

Audit is a formal structured way of evaluating whether or not safety management system of a company/ organization is effective.

If the health and safety management system is not effective what should be done to make it effective.

 

Thank you for reading this short post, I strongly believed that this will help you in your IG1 exam as well as in your workplace, developing and auditing safety management system..

Please recommend this post to all your friends who are working as a health and safety professionals or preparing for IG1 examination and let me know in comment section if this post was helpful so that I may proceed with the remaining topics of health and safety like risk assessments, hierarchy of controls, work permit system, policy and the safety management system types in details.