Wednesday, June 10, 2009

The demographic of the workplace has been changing for some time. With the changing economic conditions of the country, workers are staying longer in their jobs. That means an aging workforce and safety and health considerations possibly not considered before. Organizational cultures must change in order to address the safety and health concerns that these aging workers present. Is your organization ready to meet the needs of these workers and the challenges they present? This presentation will discuss a number of issues that organizations should be reviewing and taking steps to deal with.

When it comes to safety, there’s no “grace period” for new hires! “On the payroll” means “on the OSHA log” if injured. So don’t rely on your new hires to be “lucky” when it comes to safety. New hires are at the greatest risk for injury, so get ‘em started in the right way – with a safety mindset and clear, concise expectations. This discussion will cover how to ensure your new hires get indoctrinated to safety in the right way and will cover simple, easy steps you can implement starting with your next new hire group!

This presentation provides an overview of the well researched and highly useful “mini-management systems” that comprise, energize, and stabilize a safety management system. This is a straightforward presentation on the individual elements of: The WVU safety definition, fallacy of the word “accident,” safety management system, the Seven Step Mis-Acts Ident Sequence and how to use it for standardized “root cause analysis,” the 3 Aims and their respective 5 sub-functional practices, the 6 P’s, understanding strategy versus tactics, the relationship of employee and professional development towards safety performance, other sub-functional practices, and other key definitions and concepts. The objective is to enable you to use information gleaned from the presentation to refine all or parts of your safety management system and ensure the safety integrates well with the company’s over mission.

Approximately 70% of all industrial accidents can be attributed, at least in part, to human error. However, attributing accidents to "human error" is overly simplistic - it's too large of a category to provide meaningful information that can be used to direct performance improvements. Building on Reason's Model of Human Behavior, HFACS provides a framework to systematically identify human causal factors that result in accidents and incidents and it enables the identification of patterns, trends, and gap in existing A/I prevention processes. In short, HFACS is a tool that can be used to uncover the latent factors leading to an unsafe act (and potentially an accident or incident). Companies can then use this information to decide where to focus their potentially limited and stressed resources and make meaningful improvements in safety performance.

This presentation will provide an overview of the HFACS theory, present case studies for its application in industry, and outline several of the key program elements and tools necessary for successful adoption.

The presentation will discuss the benefits and challenges of testing industrial fire suppression systems, as well as some lessons learned. Systems touched upon will include fire water monitors, fire water pumps, deluge systems, and foam systems as well as others.