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Introduction Through 24 dynasties and 5,000 years, China has endured. When the most populous country on Earth joined the World Trade Organization in December, 2001, China opened its borders to become the manufacturer for the world. In only twenty-five years, China has transformed itself from a 100 per cent state-owned financial system to a market driven economy. International companies have been key participants in this expansion, relying upon dirt cheap land, nonexistent environmental laws, and an inexhaustible labor supply to drive costs down and profits up. China's economy has expanded at the rate of 8–12 percent per year, building a middle class of consumers and a burgeoning market for many of the goods made in China. East Meets West Western manufacturers have moved to China not only to obtain cheaper labor, but also to gain a foothold and serve the gargantuan Chinese market free of trade barriers. Their footholds have had positive ramifications for U.S. exports. According to the U.S. Commerce Department, nearly 90% of all goods made abroad by U.S. manufacturers are sold to foreign markets. A 2004 study by the Heritage Foundation noted that U.S. companies that manufacture goods for both domestic and foreign consumers produce 56% of all U.S. exports and generate 21% of America's total economic output. When U.S. companies hire skilled or semi-skilled workers in China, they pay far less in wages. Monthly wages for a skilled worker in America generally run $3000 to $4000; a Chinese counterpart earns about $150. The company is required to pay into a Chinese governmentsponsored pension plan that covers healthcare, housing and retirement benefits. At least a third of the skilled Chinese workers' wages covers these benefits. Limited health services (by Western standards), China's naturally holistic approach to individual health (diet and exercise) and the absence of malpractice suits keep the costs of healthcare low. What about the millions of workers at the lower end of the skill spectrum in China? Many unskilled laborers are left holding the fuzzy end of the tang wu lu (lollipop). Legions of peasants have migrated from rural to industrial zones and construction sites, lured by the prospect of work. Because they are not legal residents, under Chinese law, they have no rights outside of those written into their employment contract.
- Law (1.00)
- Health & Medicine (1.00)
- Banking & Finance > Economy (1.00)
- Government > Regional Government > North America Government > United States Government (0.74)
Introduction I've faced many challenges during my 25+ years of safety experience. There have been new Hazwoper regulations, ergonomics initiatives, DOT hours, OSHA inspections, labor disputes, NRC Licensing, in-house EPA inspectors, fires, explosions, emergency response evaluations, etc., etc., etc. Every step of the way, I was able to find ample resources, expertise and experience to help me succeed. There were regulations, interpretations of regulations, seminars, training programs, and (of course) consultants on every street corner eager to provide any and all needed assistance. There was even an overflowing toolbox of information to help us gain the commitment and support from upper management that we (safety professionals) must have as a core organizational value to be successful. That all changed for me in June, 1998, when I unexpectedly entered a safety "no-man's land". It's a world where there was little regulation, yet huge challenges. There were few available resources, yet endless opportunities. It was outside the day-to-day interests of OSHA, and wasn't a part of the comprehensive DOT control system, either. We call it DSD, or Direct Store Delivery, and it's a safety "no-man's land". This paper will describe some of my experiences, successes (and failures) and rovide a framework of components that can be part of a successful loss control program for route sales, service and delivery. So fasten your seatbelts.. here we go: The DSD World Direct Delivery and Service Exposures Working in the direct delivery and service (let's just call it "DSD") environment presents all traditionally recognized exposures such as slips, trips, & falls, lifting, sprains & strains, and all typical vehicle issues. These are all situations that can be managed using the normal training, coaching, and leadership methods, right? Well, before you make any assumptions, consider these additional factors:In most cases, employees work unsupervised. Turnover is usually very high, so a large percentage of new employees are always present. Work environments change from minute to minute, everything from rain to rats. The multi-tasking nature of work challenges the disciplines of even the best employee. Ask the employee to do 16 hours of work in 10. Add it all up, and you have numerous exposures in difficult environments, an employee in a hurry, and it all spells trouble. And for the most part, OSHA can't help. Their focus is on fixed facilities, manufacturing, warehousing, etc. If there are any doubts, read what they said in the Federal Register: "When a worker is killed or injured in a motor vehicle accident on a public highway or street, OSHA is only likely to investigate the incident if it occurred in a highway construction zone. Likewise, when a worker is killed or injured in an airplane crash, a train wreck, or a subway accident, OSHA does not investigate, and there is thus no need for the employer to report the incident to OSHA."1
- Transportation (1.00)
- Government > Regional Government > North America Government > United States Government (1.00)
Much can be learned and gained from listening to the heartfelt and emotional stories communicated by "injured workers" who have sustained serious on-the-job injuries. I also believe the testimonials from what I call career "injury-free" workers can hold similar or greater value if we seek them out. Their stories don't reach the headline news or radio channels. However, their testimonials non-the-less are very compelling and the attributes or characteristics injury-free workers possess can be learned and if personally put into practice on a daily basis will provide a pathway to achieving a similar injury-free outcome. Testimonials Injured Workers We all have read, heard or listened to personal stories or testimonials from workers who at one point in their working career sustained a serious injury on the job and in turn learned how it impacted not only their work and personal life, but the lives of their families, loved ones, work mates, friends and employers. We see through their emotional stories how their devastating injuries hold lasting effects long after the injury-producing event has taken place. Some injured workers are willing to share their story and lessons learned in hopes of preventing us and others from experiencing similar consequences. Injury-Free Workers At the other end of the spectrum are those individuals who have worked their entire career injuryfree. I always wondered was it luck or something else that allowed such individuals to achieve this milestone in their life. Like injured workers, injury-free workers I felt would also have a similar compelling and powerful story to tell which all of us could learn from, but absent the tragic consequences. Focus on Injury-Free Workers Ten Years Worth of Conversations A single informal discussion I had back in 1997 with a thirty-five (35) year career "injury-free" maintenance worker in a manufacturing plant left me wanting to learn more about he and others like him as to what they believe this desired outcome. Something we all aspire for, an injury-free career. Over the past ten (10) years I have attempted to seek out, meet and interview workers in many different industries who have worked their career injury-free. I defined, for the scope of my informal study, an injury-free worker as one who has not had a documented injury beyond simple first aid treatment. Whenever possible injury records, discussions with management (primarily employee supervisors, Human Resources & Safety Department Staff) and co-workers along with service/safety recognition awards were used to substantiate and verify injury-free status. I have come across injury-free workers during my many visits to manufacturing facilities, construction job sites, warehousing operations, etc. to conduct such activities as safety management system audits, perform training, attend safety meetings, conduct design safety reviews and the like. I have met injury-free workers from both within my company as well as those external to my employer. Injury-free workers have held such job titles as machine operator, maintenance mechanic, service technician, construction laborer, delivery truck driver, warehouse forklift operator to name just a few.
- Transportation > Ground > Road (0.87)
- Transportation > Freight & Logistics Services (0.54)
- Health, Safety, Environment & Sustainability > HSSE & Social Responsibility Management > HSSE management systems (1.00)
- Health, Safety, Environment & Sustainability > Safety > Safety risk management (0.69)
- Health, Safety, Environment & Sustainability > HSSE & Social Responsibility Management > Contingency planning and emergency response (0.67)
Introduction It seems like a simple question. With enough safety observations, can a safety professional accurately predict a future accident or injury? The answer is yes-you can do so with an amazingly high level of accuracy. In this paper we will describe how we came to this conclusion through the development of a site scoring method that accurately identifies sites where workers are most at risk based on safety observations alone. This is not intended to be a technical paper. Rather, it is an informal description of our research, the challenges we have overcome and our results to date. This question is most important for organizations that have many employees, decentralized management systems and multiple sites that exhibit a vast range of unsafe behaviors and conditions. In addition, those most interested in solving this question will likely deal with the diverse traits of the observers collecting this information, including but not limited to, bias, varying perceptions and a wide range of safety knowledge or competencies. It is obvious that if we increase the time qualified people have to focus on error-prone situations or high-risk work areas, we are more likely to avoid human error, accidents and injuries. Just as an accurate weather forecast enables a farmer to plan and prepare for imminent foul weather, a safety professional benefits from as much time as possible to educate, coach and provide resources for avoiding catastrophic loss. Before tackling this question, we had to address three big challenges. The first was how to get a large enough data set to ensure the reliability of information. We then needed to determine which variables would be most indicative of risk. Finally, we were concerned with the quality of an observation and specifically, how we could maximize the objectivity of our information. Addressing challenges within the observation data For our research, twelve different customers shared their inspection, observation1 and loss information from 1424 different sites (with each site having at least five inspections). Over ten million observations were collected, of which about one million were unsafe observations. On average, less than 15% of the sites had any accidents or injuries to report. From a data collection point of view, the observation lists were not exactly the same but all contained elements of unsafe behaviors and conditions (see Exhibit 1 for a sample list). Because the observations were collected electronically on site using DBO2 SafetyNet,2 this enabled convenient access and analysis for conducting research.
Introduction In the early morning hours of December 03, 1984, over forty (40) tonnes of methyl isocyanate (MIC) leaked from the Union Carbide India plant in Bhopal, India. More than 3000 people immediately perished from the accidental release of highly toxic MIC gas, and an additional 15 000 deaths, along with numerous health-related claims, were attributed to this event. On July 06, 1988, the Piper Alpha oil production platform, operating in the North Sea, suffered a series of explosions that led to an uncontrollable fire that engulfed the platform and claimed the lives of 167 crewmembers. A leak of natural gas condensate, which had built up beneath the platform was deemed to be the cause of the first explosion that eventually led to the demise and sinking of the platform. Like the Bhopal, India catastrophe, the sudden and unexpected release of a highly hazardous substance initiated a series of events that led to a significant loss of life and assets. These are only two examples of the disasters that have plagued the evolution of industrial processing and manufacturing. While there have been significant advances in technology and control systems, the opportunity for these situations to be repeated continue to exist in the 21st century. It has been recognized that to prevent these critical loss occurrences a systematic approach towards hazard identification and risk analysis is also needed. In 1992, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) formally recognized this vital component for managing high hazard chemical processes within the United States. A company that is involved in high hazard chemical processes or activities is mandated to implement a process safety management system. This system must include the systematic identification of hazards, risk level, and control strategies or corrective actions needed to prevent and/or minimize the consequences of a hazardous substance release. These requirements are defined by the Process Safety Management (PSM) of Highly Hazardous Chemicals, Explosives and Blasting Agents standard; OSHA 29 CFR 1910.119. Process Safety Management Process Hazard Management is also called Safety Systems Management or Process Safety Management. Regardless of the terminology, these are all systems that have been developed to manage the risk to personnel, property, production, the environment and ultimately, the company reputation. The occurrence of major industrial accidents and subsequent implementation of forceful safety and environmental legislation in many countries has made the Process Safety Management (PSM) or Process Hazard Management program an industry standard. The Process Safety Management (PSM) standard (OHSA 29- Part 1910.119) is the regulatory framework for process industries in the USA and is quickly becoming the industry " best practices" standard for responsible companies worldwide. American Petroleum Institute (API) Recommended Practice 750–1990, is the recommended standard for Canadian process industries and includes similar considerations for a PSM program and PHA evaluation.
- North America > United States (1.00)
- Asia > India > Madhya Pradesh > Bhopal (0.44)
- Europe > United Kingdom > North Sea (0.24)
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- Government > Regional Government > North America Government > United States Government (1.00)
- Energy > Oil & Gas > Upstream (1.00)
Introduction Organizations face numerous barriers preventing them from attaining safety performance excellence. One of the barriers is the fact that senior managers aren't demanding excellence and therefore are not committed to or involved in the safety management process. As a result of this, the organizations managers and supervisors don't accept responsibility for worker and workplace safety and are not held accountable for performance. One of the largest barriers is that rules aren't being rigidly or consistently enforced. Those same organizations do not communicate consequences for violating rules and procedures. Consequently, employees challenge compliance regularly. In most organizations, managers, supervisors, and employees are not involved in constant hazard recognition and remediation. Employee risk-taking is condoned/encouraged and employees aren't held personally responsible for their own performance. Another barrier is that the root causes of hazards and accidents are rarely identified and addressed. Finally, goals, objectives, and accountability measures are ineffective or non-existent, and poor organizational safety performance is tolerated. In these organizations, work output, quality and cost issues strongly overshadow safety performance. However, the biggest hurdle for most organizations is finding a way to fix all of those things that is successful, sustainable, and achievable. Many organizations know what they must do to improve their safety culture, but have difficulty making it happen. When attempting to improve their safety culture, most organizations get stuck somewhere between theory and application. For management and employees at all levels to engage in any safety improvement process, it must be simple and cannot be overly time-consuming. Time is a most valuable commodity in any organization.Management-Based Safety is a simple process designed to help organizations get beyond theory and into practical application of safety management system concepts. The Management-Based Safety is a comprehensive streamlined safety management system designed to support: OSHA's Voluntary Protection Program Criteria, ISO 18001 certification and ANSI Z- 10 Safety and Health Management System compliance. In 2005, U.S. scheduled air carriers had 10.9 million departures. They flew more than 18.7 million flight hours. During this time they experienced a remarkable safety record of 32 total accidents with 3 related fatalities. That translated to 0.171 accidents per 100,000 flight hours and 0.0016 fatal accidents per 100,000 flight hours. Conversely, in 2004, U.S workplaces experienced 4.2 million OSHA Recordable Injury & Illness Cases. U.S. workers had 1.2 million Lost Workday Cases and suffered 5,702 traumatic workplace fatalities. Tragically, four of every 100,000 workers died on the job in 2005. 4.6 of every 100 workers suffered OSHA recordable injuries and 2.4 employee injuries per 100 were classified as lost time. Furthermore, it is estimated that tens of thousands of other workplace deaths can be attributed to chronic occupational diseases each year. Although traditional workplaces have improved their safety performance over the years, they are still considerably worse than the in-flight safety performance logged by U.S. air carriers.
- Transportation > Air (1.00)
- Government > Regional Government > North America Government > United States Government (1.00)
Take a good look around your plant or facility. If yours is like most American workplaces these days, you're looking at a mini United Nations -- people from vastly different cultures, many who may have been born outside the U.S. You can observe the same phenomenon if you walk into your children's schools, or look around the waiting room at your doctor's office. A robust influx of newcomers to our shores is changing the American landscape, both at work and throughout our society. It's an exciting development -- new people bring new ideas, new sounds, new friendships, new beliefs, and even new tastes (have you noticed the many ethnic foods on your grocery store shelves lately?). But as you strive to develop and implement a strong health, safety, and environmental program, the differences among these employees can sometimes be daunting. These differences can bring a range of attitudes, beliefs, and values that challenge, or even impede your HS&E efforts. In our experience, we've found that quite the opposite can be true: The diversity within your workforce can be harnessed to your advantage, with a stronger safety process, and a more unified workforce to show for it. Essential to any effective safety initiative is a workforce that understands the risks, sees the steps management is taking, and comprehends its own responsibility in preventing accidents, injuries, and environmental incidents. Taken together, these things contribute to achieving a common vision. Whether that vision is identified as "zero accidents," "accident elimination," "no one hurt," etc. the point is the same. We've learned that visualizing and striving toward a common goal can be an enormously unifying experience for employees, especially those who have little else in common in terms of background and shared cultural ties. The first step in turning cultural diversity into a tool to improve safety is a thorough cultural assessment. This is a step that necessarily precedes any safety or environmental program development. When your workers look and sound different from one another, use the assessment questionnaire to gain a deeper understanding of their backgrounds, values, and beliefs, and how these affect their work style. For example, through our experience we have learned that often, people who hail from some South American countries possess a degree of fatalism not typical of North Americans. Similarly, some Mediterranean and Mid-Eastern peoples exhibit a riskier approach to life and work -- one we might call "macho." Believing their safety is in the hands of God, they assign responsibility outside of themselves and may therefore ignore hazards. It's an attitude that can result in shortcuts that appear more "manly" than taking the slow, safe way. Depending on their cultural patterns, some workers may refuse help because it suggests weakness.
I. Introduction In the hierarchy of controls, designing the hazard out of the process is the preferred method. Although this approach makes sense, designers do not always apply this concept to the fullest extent. The only way to ensure that accidents do not happen is to apply the principles of inherent safety (IS) throughout all life cycles of the process. Administrative practices, such as requiring PPE or shielding personnel from hazards, will only be effective as long as all other factors that could affect safety are perfect. Unless a process is inherently safe, accidents will likely happen if enough time is allowed. In addition to preventing accidents, IS principles will also protect processes and the general public from deliberate attacks on manufacturing facilities, such as acts of terrorism. This paper discusses the principles of IS, and discusses case studies where application of these principles would have prevented catastrophe. II. Background: Principles of inherent safety 2.1 Introduction To make a facility inherently safe means to remove hazards so that accidents will not happen. The hazards can be in the form of toxic or flammable chemicals, unsafe process conditions, design flaws that lead to injuries, or work processes that can introduce hazardous situations. At its core, IS involves analyzing risks and challenging the premise that the hazard should be there. This approach is contrasted with accepting that the hazard exists and deciding how to "work around" it. When safety practitioners consider how process, work practice, or workplace design issues can cause undesirable consequences, they should always examine why the hazard has to be present. Although the preferred method is to design the hazard out of the system, IS principles may involve making the process inherently "safer" rather than absolutely safe. On the continuum, the safety professional should always be pushing to go to the next level, from using administrative procedures to protect workers, to using active measures such as interlocks, to using passive measures, to the ultimate solution of designing the hazard out completely (Figure 1). Figure 1. Preferences in Protections from Hazards (available in full paper). The progression of questions that can be asked during a review for inherent safety include:What is the hazardous material, situation, or procedure? What administrative and hardware controls are in place? Are controls passive such that they will never fail? (e.g., dikes to collect spills) Do the controls require that hardware or a person take an action? Does the hazard even need to be present, or can it be eliminated?
- Health, Safety, Environment & Sustainability > Safety (1.00)
- Health, Safety, Environment & Sustainability > Health (1.00)
- Management > Professionalism, Training, and Education > Communities of practice (0.62)
- Data Science & Engineering Analytics > Information Management and Systems > Knowledge management (0.62)
Many safety professionals responsible for facilities with fuel-fired equipment exist within a culture of ignorance, misunderstandings and/or denial about the impact of an explosion or fire caused by the operation of equipment such as boilers, furnaces, ovens, dryers, etc. The National Fire Protection Association (NFPA) Journal reports that hundreds of explosions happen every year resulting in millions of dollars in business interruption, facility damage, lawsuits, fines, litigation and lost market share. Conversely, smaller, but more frequent, production outages also cost millions in business interruption, supply chain delays, lost orders and competitiveness, but are often deemed to be culturally accepted as a general business practice. Unfortunately, society and individual companies usually act only when some very large and tragic event occurs. Combustion equipment safety is critical to the daily operation of many facilities and the safety of employees. This presentation will help you understand how to protect your organization from combustion-related incidents involving fuel-fired equipment before you end up a headline. This paper uses statistics from over 10,000 fuel-fired equipment inspections and tests to help readers weave through the basics of four combustion standards (NFPA 54, 85, 86 and ASME CSD-1) needed to dramatically reduce and/or eliminate fuel-fired factors and make safety, efficiency, reliability and continued competitiveness part of the corporate culture. Just a Few Numbers Many people believe that explosions, fires or outages from fuel-fired equipment only happen to others, as if they are immune (Exhibit 1). Only loss of life seems to make the 11 o'clock news. Any headlines soon fade or rarely garner the follow-up attention required to highlight the pitfalls of poorly maintained and operated equipment. Today's corporate public relations departments are also very good at shutting down the flow of information that may leak to media. Our experiences has been that little "poofs", "pops", bulging furnace walls or "pregnant boilers" are more prevalent than not and imply that incident headlines are only the tip of the iceberg. The American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) states that the major perils in operating automatically fired boilers are loss of water (low water), furnace explosion, overpressure, and over temperature. The principal causes of accidents to automatically fired boilers are lack of proper controls and safety devices, lack of adequate maintenance and complacency on the part of the operator due to long periods of trouble-free operation. Actually, between 1991 and 2002, 23,338 boiler and pressure vessel accidents have killed 127 people and injured 720. This statistic does not include unreported incidents or non-boiler/pressure vessel explosion and fire statistics (i.e. ovens, furnaces, parts washers, etc.). Exhibit 1: Boiler Explosion Moving beyond just boilers and pressure vessels, major explosions and fires in the US between 1990 and 2002 have cost over $13.7 billion in property damage alone. ii These figures do not include the costs of lawsuits, fines, litigation, supply chain delays, lost market share, stock devaluation and probably the most expensive, low morale. It is quite staggering to think about the true impact society absorbs with these safety and financial issues.
- Law > Litigation (0.95)
- Energy > Oil & Gas > Upstream (0.67)
- Energy > Oil & Gas > Downstream (0.46)
Introduction The management of safety has undergone a number of radical changes in the past 100 years. The most important paradigm shifts occurred in through the work of Heinrich, then the advent of the safety systems era, and of late, the behavioral safety approaches that became popular around the world. All of these 'approaches' to safety each left an indelible mark on the way we targeted safety improvements, what interventions were deployed and how those were measured. It also resulted in a number of strongly held "myths" of safety management, each discussed, analyzed and challenged in this paper. The paper also analyzes the effects of some of these approaches and points to a complex problem of the increased levels regulation and of perceived protection that workers enjoy in the work place - leading to what is commonly known as 'complacency'. A second problem of modern safety management is a consequence of the superficial treatment of accidents through procedures and rules changes, leading to a phenomenon called accident migration. The most recent approach to safety is generally known as behavior-based safety and flowed from the human sciences and quality management era. This approach had a dramatic impact on the way safety was managed around the world, but is still falling short on a number of key aspects, most notably the area of risk cognition and risk compensation. Many workplace accidents occur simply because the risk was not or . The paper proposes a new direction for safety, called risk competency safety, which is based on cognitive psychology, to combat this consequence of modern protection. Managing safety today… Managing safety is a young science, but an old practice. Legend has it that in 1870 BC King Hammurabi used a simple but extremely effective safety system - if a worker lost a limb due to the overseer's negligence, the overseer's limb would be removed to match the worker's loss. If only it was that simple… The phenomenon of an 'accident' was treated almost with disdain by the management practitioners of the industrial age. We slapped simplistic definitions on them, such as 'unplanned, unexpected events'. We controlled them as a 'loss' through management models developed in the 1960's that are barely credible today. The central drive in safety has remained much the same for the last 90 years, traditionally known as the three E's of safety: Engineering (the hazard out), Education (of workers in the skills, rules and procedures) and Enforcement (policing for compliance and applying discipline when not). These approaches still permeate every aspect of safety: road safety, occupational safety, fleet safety, etc and the so called 'modern' behavioral safety approach still functions well within the compliance models of safety.
- North America > United States (0.46)
- North America > Canada (0.46)
- Law (0.88)
- Materials > Metals & Mining (0.68)
- Transportation > Ground > Road (0.66)
- Health & Medicine > Consumer Health (0.47)