Safety and Health Management Systems are processes within an institution’s management system that promote occupational safety and health, and adherence to work policy and organization. Such systems are also involved in planning for the prevention of illnesses and accidents and defining line managers’ responsibilities. Further, the systems outline the resources, procedures, and practices that develop and implement occupational health and safety policy. This essay will discuss the fundamentals of the safety design review process, systems safety, and prevention by design due to the immense benefits of such systems. Moreover, the essay will explain the significance and role of safety in a safety management system and how it relates to the safety management systems approach.
The safety design review is a concept in safety and health management systems that actively forestalls imminent and present hazards, facilitating their avoidance in the workplace through process updates or new equipment. There are five fundamental steps in the review process, beginning with outlining safety goals that are compliant with regulatory requirements, existing legislation, and the criteria for risk tolerance of the organization’s projects. The next step is comprehending the environmental hazards and elements which eases the process of defining effective control processes for hazards. The third stage is applying safer design principles through the elimination, substitution, moderation, or reduction of hazards. The fourth stage is risk control in case internal system control fails. The final step in safety design is consolidating and communicating the review outcomes to all pertinent parties.
Systems safety is a concept that applies the principles of management and engineering, techniques, and criteria in the optimization of safety within the restrictions of time, cost, and ensuring the effectiveness of operations (NASA, 2012). Systems safety achieves safety by taking on a holistic approach to systems and accounting for various system components’ interactions. One fundamental of systems safety is the cost of testing, which determines to what extent organizations can rely on test-fail-fix tactics in developing safe systems and their reliance on analytical outcomes. Another fundamental is the complexity of the system, which necessitates the need to leverage modern and contemporary methods of evaluating hazards to enable organizations to comprehensively analyze and identify all scenarios that could potentially cause adverse safety outcomes.
Safety through design is a concept that uses design processes to design hazards out of health and safety management systems (Program Action Plan Team, 2015). The process involves eliminating or reducing risks in the system design, replacing the hazards with less hazardous materials to reduce risk, isolating people from the risk by incorporating safety measures and warning devices, instituting administrative controls through training, changing work schedules and methods, and finally protecting workers through the provision of personal protective equipment.
Safety plays a key role in safety management systems by ensuring that employees’ welfare and health are protected and that incidences that could potentially cause injuries are eliminated and avoided. Safety is interrelated with the safety management systems approach in that organizations define safety as the provision of a work environment devoid of fatalities, injuries, or pain. Safety management systems, on the other hand, help organizations achieve the goal of safety. Safety is, therefore, a goal of the systems approach.
In conclusion, an organization’s workers are the most important assets and, as such, ought to be protected. To this end, the immense benefits of investing in their wellbeing and safety cannot be understated. Moreover, organizations enjoy numerous benefits from implementing health and safety management systems such as reduction of an organization’s legal liability, reduction of workplace accidents and occupational illnesses, improving the underwriting risk and work-related stress, and increasing employee productivity.
References
NASA. (2012). System safety. Home. https://sma.nasa.gov/sma-disciplines/system-safety
Program Action Plan Team. (2015). Safety in the Design Process (20). U.S. Department of the Interior Bureau of Reclamation. https://www.usbr.gov/safety/sap/documents/teamreports/Team20.pdf