Safety management system

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A safety management system (SMS) is a management system designed to manage occupational safety and health risks in the workplace. If the system contains elements of management of longer-term health impacts and occupational disease, it may be referred to as a safety and health management system (SHMS) or health and safety management system.

Contents

Description

An SMS provides a systematic way to continuously identify and monitor hazards and control risks while maintaining assurance that these risk controls are effective. [1] SMS can be defined as:

...a businesslike approach to safety. It is a systematic, explicit and comprehensive process for managing safety risks. As with all management systems, a safety management system provides for goal setting, planning, and measuring performance. A safety management system is woven into the fabric of an organization. It becomes part of the culture, the way people do their jobs. [2]

There are three imperatives for adopting a safety management system for a business – these are ethical, legal and financial. There is an implied moral obligation placed upon an employer to ensure that work activities and the place of work are safe; there are legislative requirements defined in every jurisdiction on how this is to be achieved and there is a substantial body of evidence which shows that effective safety management can reduce the financial exposure and damage to the reputation of an organisation by reducing accidents.

To address these three important elements, an effective SMS should:

The foundation to an effective safety management system is that of effective risk management. The defined process within an organisation for the identification, assessment, evaluation and control (or risk treatment) of risk will be key, must be carefully considered and then documented within the safety management system. As with safety management, there are a number of risk management models that can be used depending on the risk profile of an organisation, but the internationally recognised standard ISO 31000 - Risk management – Guidelines [3] is a common starting point. Interestingly, there is no reference to safety within the standard.

Historical context

Safety management evolved as a counterweight to the exploitation of workers in industry through the 19th and 20th centuries. As the industrial revolution opened up substantial commercial opportunities in Western societies, the financial imperative of business owners and industrialists lead to the use of an exploited, unskilled and uneducated workforce including child labour and rural migrant workers, often in working conditions where injury and death were day to day occurrences.

It became the remit of legislators with a social conscience to understand that governments had a moral and legal responsibility to protect workers using general and industry specific safety legislation. In the UK, the early 19th century Factory Acts were a significant development for gradually improving occupational safety through the decades, in fact the last iteration was made in 1961. This evolving environment was also the driving force behind the formation of the trade union or labour union movements and worker representation in the early 19th century across Europe and America which developed through the decades into representation in wage and working condition negotiations, but also in protecting the health, safety and welfare of workers.

One clear example of how unsafe and dangerous work conditions had become during the industrial revolution can be seen in this extract relating to an early 20th century mining disaster in West Virginia, USA.

As the 19th century closed out and the 20th century began, West Virginia had become a more dangerous place to mine than most.

West Virginia fell far behind other major coal-producing states in regulating mining conditions. Between 1890 and 1912, West Virginia had a higher mine death rate than any other state. West Virginia was the site of numerous deadly coal mining accidents, including the nation's worst coal disaster. On December 6, 1907, an explosion at a mine owned by the Fairmont Coal Company in Monongah, Marion County, killed 361. One historian has suggested that during World War I, a U.S. soldier had a better statistical chance of surviving in battle than did a West Virginian working in the coal mines. [4]

The drivers that were to positively influence mine safety as the 20th century progressed included; improvements in mining legislation with regulatory oversight and in occupational health and safety legislation, involvement by trade unions to improve workers’ rights and working conditions, developments in mining technologies and a more general acceptance in wider society that such high levels of fatalities were no longer acceptable. [5]

As research into occupational medicine improved, it had become possible to start to identify industrial diseases and illnesses caused by exposure to industry specific hazards such as coal dust in mining (miners black lung or coalworker's pneumoconiosis), asbestos in construction (asbestosis and mesothelioma), exposure to physical agents such as occupational noise from industrial machinery (hearing loss, tinnitus or deafness) and vibration hazards from tools and equipment (hand-arm vibration syndrome and vibration white finger). These disabling and often fatal hazard vectors could then be targeted by legislation to reduce worker exposure to these dangerous substances and activities.

As more industry specific and general safety, health and welfare related legislation started to be introduced, it became necessary for employers to have a framework within which these safety regulations could be understood, managed and the legal requirements implemented. This was necessary, not just to comply with regulations but to also avoid fines and legal costs for non-compliance, increased insurance and workers compensation costs due to accidents and especially in the U.S. increasingly expensive criminal and civil liability lawsuits for death and injury caused at work.

Basic safety management components

International Labour Organization SMS model

The ILO guidance document is one of the most basic and adaptable models for organizations to utilize when developing a safety management system. In the ILO guidance document, [6] the basic safety management components are:

  1. Policy – Establish within policy statements the requirements for sufficient resources; define top management commitment and state occupational safety and health (OSH) targets.
  2. Organizing – How is the organization structured; how is responsibility and accountability defined; how does the organization communicate internally and externally; what documentation is required and how is training and competency defined.
  3. Planning and Implementation – How does the organization plan for, develop and implement its approach to risk management; how are hazards identified and risk effectively managed; what goals and objectives are set to drive OHS performance and measure progress; what arrangements are made for contingency and emergency situations.
  4. Evaluation – How is OSH performance measured and assessed; what is the processes for the reporting and investigation of accidents and incidents; what internal and external audit processes are in place to review and verify the system.
  5. Action for Improvement – How are corrective and preventive action created, managed and closed out; what processes are in place to ensure the continual improvement process.


Although other safety management models may use different terminology, the basic components and workflow for safety management systems will be the same. The desired outcome is an effective Plan, Do, Check, Act (PDCA) process where the goal is that of continual and measurable improvement.

Relationship to other business management practices

An SMS is intended to act as a part of the business administration system for an organization to effectively meet its legal obligations under applicable occupational safety and health laws. The scope of the organization's operations and therefore its risk profile will determine how the SMS is structured and what resources are required to manage occupational health and safety risk effectively. Safety management should be considered as a part of the overall business management system of an organization and not an add-on to it. Due to the close association between health and safety, safety management systems (SMS) are increasingly known as occupational health and safety management systems (HSMS, SHMS, OHSMS or OSHMS). Further, management standards across a range of business functions such as environment, quality and safety are now being designed so that these traditionally disparate elements can be integrated and managed within a single business management system and not as separate and stand-alone functions. Therefore ,some organizations dovetail other management system functions, such as process safety, environmental resource management or quality management together with safety management to meet both regulatory requirements, industry sector requirements and their own internal and discretionary standard requirements.

Effective safety management means that organizations need to ensure they are looking at all safety risks within the organization as a single system, rather than having multiple, competing, 'Safety Management Silos'. [7] If safety is not seen holistically, it can interfere with the prioritization of improvements or even result in safety issues being missed. For example, after the March 2005 BP Texas City refinery explosion, investigations concluded that the company had put too much emphasis on personal safety thus ignoring the safety of their processes. The antidote to such silo thinking is the proper evaluation of all risks, a key aspect of an effective SMS. [8]

Development of safety management standards

Industry sector standards

Over time, particular safety management models can become a preferred standard within an industry sector which is an approach often driven by industry representative bodies or trade associations. In industries where public safety is a prime consideration or where organisations operate in a high risk industry sector, specific regulations may be introduced which detail requirements that fit the industry risk profile, such as the OSHA requirement for a process safety management system. [9]

Industry specific safety management include:

Regulatory requirements for a safety management system include:

Independent safety management standards include:

National and international standards

Many countries have developed national safety management models that have become adopted by organizations across a wide range of industries. National standards draw on experience and knowledge from a wide variety of organizations and individuals and can provide a uniform and consistent framework in which to work. In addition, such standards can be externally accessed and certified, which for many organizations is a very desirable goal.

These standards have a number of benefits:

The Occupational Health and Safety Assessment Series, commonly known as OHSAS 18001 series standard from 1999 was an attempt to consolidate and establish a definitive certifiable standard internationally, taking lessons and best practice from many national standards. It was widely adopted with a revision undertaken in 2007. The OHSAS Project Group was independent of the International Organization for Standardization (ISO). OHSAS 18001:2007 was withdrawn and replaced by the ISO standard ISO 45001:2018 Occupational health and safety management systems — Requirements with guidance for use [21]

One significant development that ISO 45001 has introduced is compatibility with the ISO 14001 environmental management and the ISO 9001 quality management standards.

See also

Related Research Articles

The ISO 14000 family of standards by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) relate to environmental management that exists to help organizations (a) minimize how their operations negatively affect the environment ; (b) comply with applicable laws, regulations, and other environmentally oriented requirements; and (c) continually improve in the above.

A management system is a set of policies, processes and procedures used by an organization to ensure that it can fulfill the tasks required to achieve its objectives. These objectives cover many aspects of the organization's operations. For instance, an environmental management system enables organizations to improve their environmental performance, and an occupational safety and health management system enables an organization to control its occupational health and safety risks.

The Occupational Safety and Health Administration is a regulatory agency of the United States Department of Labor that originally had federal visitorial powers to inspect and examine workplaces. The United States Congress established the agency under the Occupational Safety and Health Act, which President Richard M. Nixon signed into law on December 29, 1970. OSHA's mission is to "assure safe and healthy working conditions for working men and women by setting and enforcing standards and by providing training, outreach, education, and assistance." The agency is also charged with enforcing a variety of whistleblower statutes and regulations. OSHA's workplace safety inspections have been shown to reduce injury rates and injury costs without adverse effects on employment, sales, credit ratings, or firm survival.

Construction site safety is an aspect of construction-related activities concerned with protecting construction site workers and others from death, injury, disease or other health-related risks. Construction is an often hazardous, predominantly land-based activity where site workers may be exposed to various risks, some of which remain unrecognized. Site risks can include working at height, moving machinery and materials, power tools and electrical equipment, hazardous substances, plus the effects of excessive noise, dust and vibration. The leading causes of construction site fatalities are falls, electrocutions, crush injuries, and caught-between injuries.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Occupational hygiene</span> Management of workplace health hazards

Occupational hygiene is the anticipation, recognition, evaluation, control, and confirmation (ARECC) of protection from risks associated with exposures to hazards in, or arising from, the workplace that may result in injury, illness, impairment, or affect the well-being of workers and members of the community. These hazards or stressors are typically divided into the categories biological, chemical, physical, ergonomic and psychosocial. The risk of a health effect from a given stressor is a function of the hazard multiplied by the exposure to the individual or group. For chemicals, the hazard can be understood by the dose response profile most often based on toxicological studies or models. Occupational hygienists work closely with toxicologists for understanding chemical hazards, physicists for physical hazards, and physicians and microbiologists for biological hazards. Environmental and occupational hygienists are considered experts in exposure science and exposure risk management. Depending on an individual's type of job, a hygienist will apply their exposure science expertise for the protection of workers, consumers and/or communities.

Environment, health and safety (EHS) is an interdisciplinary field focused on the study and implementation of practical aspects environmental protection and safeguard of people's health and safety, especially in an occupational context. It is what organizations must do to make sure that their activities do not cause harm. Commonly, quality - quality assurance and quality control - is adjoined to form HSQE or equivalent initialisms.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">ISO 22000</span> Food safety standard

ISO 22000 is a food safety management system by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) which is outcome focused, providing requirements for any organization in the food industry with objective to help to improve overall performance in food safety. These standards are intended to ensure safety in the global food supply chain. The standards involve the overall guidelines for food safety management and also focuses on traceability in the feed and food chain.

The American Society of Safety Professionals (ASSP), formerly known as American Society of Safety Engineers (ASSE), is a global organization of occupational safety and health (OSH) professional members who manage, supervise, research and consult on work-related OSH concerns across all industries. Society members use risk-based approaches to prevent workplace fatalities, injuries and illnesses.

Prevention through design (PtD), also called safety by design usually in Europe, is the concept of applying methods to minimize occupational hazards early in the design process, with an emphasis on optimizing employee health and safety throughout the life cycle of materials and processes. It is a concept and movement that encourages construction or product designers to "design out" health and safety risks during design development. The process also encourages the various stakeholders within a construction project to be collaborative and share the responsibilities of workers' safety evenly. The concept supports the view that along with quality, programme and cost; safety is determined during the design stage. It increases the cost-effectiveness of enhancements to occupational safety and health.

ISO 31000 is a family of international standards relating to risk management codified by the International Organization for Standardization. The standard is intended to provide a consistent vocabulary and methodology for assessing and managing risk, resolving the historic ambiguities and differences in the ways risk are described.

The Global Food Safety Initiative (GFSI) is a private organization that works as a "coalition of action" from the Consumer Goods Forum (CGF) and brings together retailers and brand owners (manufacturers) from across the CGF membership. The GFSI operates under multi-stakeholder governance, with the objective to create "an extended food safety community to oversee food safety standards for businesses and help provide access to safe food for people everywhere". GFSI's work in benchmarking and harmonization aims to foster mutual acceptance of GFSI-recognized certification programs across the industry, with the ambition to enable a "once certified, accepted everywhere" approach.

Nigel Howard Croft is a globally recognized authority on quality management and conformity assessment. He retired as Chairman of the ISO Joint Technical Coordination Group for Management System Standards in December 2023 after serving a three-year term, having been appointed by ISO's Technical Management Board in December 2020. During his tenure, he coordinated the deployment of the ISO London Declaration on Climate Action into all ISO Management System Standards, requiring organizations that implement these standards to determine the extent to which climate change can affect their results and the ways in which their activities can have a impact on climate change. This can then lead to the implementation of risk-based adaptation and mitigation strategies. Dr Croft was previously Chair of the ISO Technical Committee TC 176/SC 2 from February 2010 until December 2018, with overall responsibility for the ISO 9001 standard, used worldwide as a basis for certification of quality management systems, and the ISO 9004 guidelines standard aimed at improving organisational performance, among others. In 2019 and 2020 he led the revision of "Annex SL" of the ISO Directives, that forms the basis for over 40 management system standards including those on environmental management, Occupational Health and Safety, Information Security, Anti-bribery, Food Safety, Artificial Intelligence and many more.

OHSAS 18001, Occupational Health and Safety Assessment Series, was an international standard for occupational health and safety management systems that was subsequently adopted as a British Standard. Compliance with it enabled organizations to demonstrate that they had a system in place for occupational health and safety. BSI cancelled OHSAS 18001 to adopt ISO 45001. ISO 45001 was published in March 2018 by the International Organization for Standardization. Organizations that are certified to OHSAS 18001 were able to migrate to ISO 45001 by March 2021 to retain a recognized certification.

A lone worker (LW) is an employee who performs an activity that is carried out in isolation from other workers without close or direct supervision. Such staff may be exposed to risk because there is no-one to assist them and so a risk assessment may be required. Lone workers are now often supported by cloud-based automated monitoring systems and specialised monitoring call centres - often referred to as an 'Alarm Receiving Centre' or 'ARC' in the UK, or 'Emergency Dispatch Center' or 'EDC' in the US.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Occupational safety and health</span> Field concerned with the safety, health and welfare of people at work

Occupational safety and health (OSH) or occupational health and safety (OHS) is a multidisciplinary field concerned with the safety, health, and welfare of people at work. OSH is related to the fields of occupational medicine and occupational hygiene and aligns with workplace health promotion initiatives. OSH also protects all the general public who may be affected by the occupational environment.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">ISO 45001</span> ISO OH&S standard

ISO 45001 is an International Organization for Standardization (ISO) standard for management systems of occupational health and safety (OHS), published in March 2018. The goal of ISO 45001 is the reduction of occupational injuries and diseases, including promoting and protecting physical and mental health.

A psychosocial hazard or work stressor is any occupational hazard related to the way work is designed, organized and managed, as well as the economic and social contexts of work. Unlike the other three categories of occupational hazard, they do not arise from a physical substance, object, or hazardous energy.

The Annex SL is a section of the ISO/IEC Directives part 1 that prescribes how ISO Management System Standard (MSS) standards should be written. The aim of Annex SL is to enhance the consistency and alignment of MSS by providing a unifying and agreed-upon high level structure, identical core text and common terms and core definitions. The aim being that all ISO Type A MSS are aligned and the compatibility of these standards is enhanced.

MS 1722:2011 – Occupational Safety and Health Management Systems – Requirements is a Malaysian Standard that provides requirements on Occupational Safety and Health Management Systems (OSHMS) and basis for the development OSH systems in an organisation. The MS 1722 standard enable an organization to manage its OHS risks and improve its OHS performance. The requirements of the standard are intended to address OHS for employees, temporary employees, contractors and other personnel on site rather than the safety of products and services. The standards provide a more effective method of protecting employees and others from workplace injuries and illnesses and demonstrate management commitment in meeting OHS requirements.

Occupational safety and health literacy or OSH literacy is the degree to which individuals have the functional capacity to access, process and utilize the occupational safety and health (OSH) information and services needed to eliminate or reduce risk.

References

  1. ↑ "System Approach for Safety Oversight" (PDF). SASO Outreach. Spring 2009. Archived from the original (PDF) on November 21, 2010. Retrieved September 29, 2009.
  2. ↑ "Transport Canada publication TP 13739". Archived from the original on June 16, 2008.
  3. ↑ "ISO - ISO 31000 — Risk management". December 10, 2021. Archived from the original on December 23, 2022. Retrieved November 8, 2020.
  4. ↑ "West Virginia's Mine Wars". West Virginia State Archives. Archived from the original on February 23, 2020. Retrieved December 26, 2018.
  5. ↑ Tilleard, Andrew (May 13, 2020). Success from Failure: Learning from Industrial Accidents and Disasters. ISBN   978-1-9999499-8-3.
  6. ↑ ILO-OSH 2001 Guidelines on Occupational Safety and Health Management Systems. International Labour Organisation. January 1, 2009. ISBN   978-92-2-111634-9. Archived from the original on May 9, 2022. Retrieved April 18, 2017.
  7. ↑ Evans, Andy; Parker, John (May 2008). "Safety Management Systems" (PDF). Beyond Safety Management Systems. AeroSafety World. pp. 12–17. Archived (PDF) from the original on October 10, 2023. Retrieved July 3, 2015.
  8. ↑ Baker, James A (January 2007). "Report of the BP US Refineries Independent Safety Review Panel" (PDF). Archived (PDF) from the original on October 10, 2023. Retrieved September 29, 2009.
  9. 1 2 "1910.119 - Process safety management of highly hazardous chemicals. | Occupational Safety and Health Administration". Archived from the original on October 11, 2023. Retrieved November 3, 2020.
  10. ↑ "IOGP - the global oil and gas industry trade association". Archived from the original on November 21, 2020. Retrieved November 3, 2020.
  11. ↑ "Operating Management System Framework for controlling risk and delivering high performance in the oil and gas industry". Archived from the original on October 10, 2023. Retrieved November 3, 2020.
  12. ↑ "Safety Management". ICAO. Archived from the original on July 16, 2023. Retrieved April 23, 2017.
  13. ↑ "Safety Management System (SMS) for Airports – Guidance, Tools, & Related Information". Federal Aviation Administration. Archived from the original on October 10, 2023.
  14. ↑ Dickstein (July 28, 2011). "EASA Begins the Process of Implementing SMS Rules". Archived from the original on January 12, 2015.
  15. ↑ "The International Safety Management (ISM) Code". Archived from the original on September 26, 2023. Retrieved November 3, 2020.
  16. ↑ "Consolidated federal laws of canada, Railway Safety Management System Regulations, 2015". April 2015. Archived from the original on December 6, 2022. Retrieved November 3, 2020.
  17. ↑ "American National Standards Institute - ANSI Home". Archived from the original on October 16, 2023. Retrieved November 3, 2020.
  18. ↑ "ASSP - American Society of Safety Professionals | ASSP". Archived from the original on October 12, 2023. Retrieved November 3, 2020.
  19. ↑ "ANSI / ASSP Z10 OSH Management Standard | ASSP". Archived from the original on October 10, 2023. Retrieved November 3, 2020.
  20. ↑ "Hand and Arm Vibration Assessments".
  21. ↑ "Iso 45001:2018". September 22, 2022. Archived from the original on July 29, 2022. Retrieved November 3, 2020.
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