When done correctly, blogs have the power to provide relevant and useful information about health and safety in a time efficient manner. Instead of surfing through websites after websites, you can just go through a well-written blog to acquire all the information in a neatly summarized view.
Here are some of the most informative and interesting blogs we think every safety manager should be reading.

1. RoSPA Workplace Safyety

RoSPA's blog on workplace safety is one of the most popular blogs in the field, and rightly so. RoSPA's vision is to help organizations improve their actions towards health and safety to prevent accidents and save lives at the workplace. The blog includes useful content on safety for various industries, tips on how to make health and safety an organizational priority and features on awards they have given out for achievements in the field.

2. Safety by EHS Today

EHS Today has the latest and the most up to date information about professional and occupational safety practices. This work safety newsfeed covers a number of measures that must be observed to ensure safety and security in a professional environment. In addition to workplace safety, the blog has interesting reads on risk management, safety management practices and safety trends, as well as leadership tactics that enable the safety culture to grow.

3. ZeroSpeak

This blog is run by safety expert Kevin Burns and focuses on the various strategies to build personal leadership in safety. Kevin talks deeply about how a caring and nurturing environment of safety can improve businesses and how motivation can be the driving factor in augmenting safety within a company. The blog also has a podcast service for individuals who prefer listening rather than reading.

4. ProAct Safety

This very well managed and to the point blog consists of a number of topics that can help leaders increase safety in their organizations by developing a more caring and nurturing attitude towards their employees. Run by author Terry L. Mathis, topics such as safety excellence and transformational leadership define how exemplary leaders differ in their attitudes towards employee health and safety.

5. Safety at Work Blog

Like the name suggests, this blog is focusing on all things safety at the workplace. You will not only find educational content and tips on safety, but also conversation starters on topics such as mental health, harassment and bullying at work. The Safety at Work Blog is intending to provide their readers with the best possible understanding of the considerations they need to make around health and safety, and where OHS might be falling behind.

6. Tap Into Safety

Tap Into Safety is utilizing their expertise as safety trainers and educators to cover the most essential, and sometimes less discussed health and safety risks at the workplace. This blog has content on injury prevention, mobility considerations, contractor safety, as well as safety awareness education for everyone in the organization.

7. The Blog by Plan Brothers

We might be biased to nominate ourselves, but curating quality content is a passion for us at Plan Brothers. Our goal is to help organizations adapt to the volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity (also known as VUCA) of their surroundings, and thus the blog features a vast array of topics such as safety management, incident reporting and learning from failure.

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Monday, 21 February 2022

IS 14489 - Third Party Safety Audit

All about IS 14489 - Third Party Safety Audit

What actually is IS 14489?

IS 14489 is the code of practice on OS&H Audit. The standard establishes The Audit objectives, criteria and practices to be followed & provides guidelines for establishing, planning, conducting and documenting and reporting of audits on occupational safety and health systems at the workplace.

NSC - National Safety Council is the Best agency for conducting IS 14489 audit and all other third party safety audits.

Objectives of IS 14489 - Third-party Safety Audit

The overall objectives of the safety audit were as under:-

to carry out a systematic critical appraisal of all potential hazards involving personal, plant, services and operation methods.
to examine critically the working conditions of the plants which are hazardous in nature and may lead to accidents.
to evaluate work practices and procedures followed in the plant and their effectiveness.
to evaluate the effectiveness of the existing safety and health management system and suggest recommendations for implementation by the management.

Scope of IS 14489 - Third-party Safety Audit

The scope of the safety audit is limited to the safety and health of workers employed in the manufacturing processes and operations and also the safety of the plant and equipment used in the factory.

The Audit is carried out as per the requirement under IS 14489 and the various Legislative requirements such as the Factories Act, 1948 and the state Factories Rules, Environment (Protection) Act, 1986 and Rules made there under and other applicable Statutes.

“Management Systems” audit is done to assess the management’s involvement and commitment towards promoting safety and health systems at work. Management system audit provides scope of examining and evaluation of safety policies and procedures and their review, hazard communication system, dissemination of information and hazard awareness programme, training and motivation of employees, etc.

Besides management systems audit, technical aspects of plant activities namely, storage and handling of hazardous substances, Emergency Preparedness, process and operational safety review, transportation safety, testing and examination of plant and equipment, housekeeping, waste disposal system, fire prevention and control, etc. would also be audited.

List of Documents to be checked in IS 14489 Audit

The rundown of record may shifts from association to association or processing plants yet generally beneath referenced documents/records should be accessible at site. Records under the great practices for consistence with the lawful prerequisites identified with the HSE.

OHSE Policy and OHSE Manual
OHSE organization chart
Training & Orientation records
Record of factory/ site safety inspections
Accident investigation reports with CAPA - Corrective Action & Preventive Action
Accidents and dangerous occurrences analysis
Record of tests and examinations of equipment and structures
SOP for various operations
Record of permit to work
Record of monitoring of flammable explosives substances at the workplace
Maintenance and testing records of fire detection, alarm and fire-fighting equipment
Medical checkup records of employees
Material safety data sheets - MSDS
On-site emergency plans and record of mock drills
Records of waste disposal
Housekeeping records
Safety committee meetings records
Records of modifications carried out in plant or process
Calibration and testing records of instruments
Inspection books and statutory records
Records of previous audits with CAPA - Corrective Action & Preventive Action
Process safety monitoring records
Contractor and supplier records
Management review outcome records
Statutory licenses, consents and approvals
Records of Legal compliance and legal requirements
Communications with interested parties & External communications
Workplace environment Records. air quality etc.
Tree plantation or green field record
Environment statement
Workplace environment Records. air quality etc.
Environment management plan

Methodology of IS 14489 - Third-party Safety Audit

The following methodology would be adopted to identify the hazards to health and safety of the employees due to deviations from the applicable statutes, standards, operating procedures and the codes of practices by the audit team.

The Audit Questionnaire would be sent to the organization to provide the necessary replies on receipt of the Purchase Order and the tentative dates for the field visit. Additional Questionnaires would be developed depending on the type of industry.

The safety Audit would be carried out by a team of 2 to 3 experts, One each from Mechanical, Electrical and Chemical or Mining or Oil & Gas Background depending on the type industry, port, refinery, mining or construction site.

A thorough survey of various applicable statutes, codes of practices, standards & other literature would be done prior to the field work in order to collect available safety and health related information applicable to the plants to be audited. Based on the information collected, separate additional checklists would be prepared for different areas. The inspections in the plants would be done with the help of these checklists.

An opening meeting would be held with the Management to explain the objective, scope and methodology that would be followed while carrying out the audit. This meeting would help in establishing mutual communication links between audit team & the plant executives and to confirm the resources & facilities needed by the audit team.

The various plants and sections would be visited and inspected to assess the need for supplementing or modifying the details obtained through questionnaires and to ascertain the gaps to make suitable recommendations to overcome the same.

Discussions would be held with the plant personnel, supervisors and management representatives and workers to derive the information regarding existing measures on safety and health and accident prevention practices in the plant.

The Closing meeting to be held with the Management including the Safety Head and other unit Head to apprise them with the draft audit observations and recommendations based on the audit visit and examination of the various documents to ensure the technical feasibility in implementation.

Find the attachments of IS 14489 and Checklist for the same

IS 14489

Checklist for IS 14489

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Sunday, 20 February 2022

How to do Preliminary Process Hazard Analysis (PHA)

How to do PHA - Preliminary Hazard Analysis?

First part should be theory and it's required to understand the concept. Stay on till the end of the post as a practical process and usable format should be also described in this post.

Where the PHA technique should be used?

It should be used at some point of the Conceptual or planning,
the early improvement of plant selection,
the early layout section of a plant.

The technique should be meant to be used simplest within side the initial section of plant improvement for instances wherein revel in presents very little perception into capability protection problems,

Example of wherein to apply PHA?

A new plant with a new technique. Early identification of a maximum of the dangers can be viable ensuing in a powerful saving in value that would in any other case result from foremost plant redesigns if dangers are observed at a later stage. It may be very beneficial for ‘web website online selection’. It does now no longer forestall the want for also danger assessment; instead, it should be a precursor to the next hazard analysis. Items for attention include meticulous preparation of a listing of hazards:

Raw materials, intermediates, by-products, very last products;
Plant equipment (high-pressure systems);
Interface amongst system additives (material, fire etc);
Environment (earthquake, tsunami, severe temperature, flood); and
Operations (take a look at maintenance and emergency preparedness) Safety system.

The Scope of PHA:

Hazardous components or materials or substances.
Safety or OHSE interfaces between system elements
Environmental Impact including operating environments
Operation, test, maintenance, built, diagnostics, and emergency preparedness
Facilities, property of installed equipment, support equipment, administrative control and training
Safety-related equipment, safeguards, engineering control and possible alternate approaches
Malfunctions, maloperation and damage to the system, subsystems, or software

Example of PHA:

Toxic gas ‘Ammonia’ is one of the additives used inside the procedure; so we need to list out below mentioned points to identify the probability of accidents and severity of risk.

Reasons for the dangers:

The dangers because of storing the gas;
Hazards from the extra gas after the use;
Lines distributing the gas ‘Ammonia’; and
Leakage at some point of the receipt of the gas etc.

The results of those reasons may be:

Injury/Fatality to individuals in the plant or close by areas, and
Damage of belongings because of an explosion.

Safety measures/corrective moves supplied to limit impact:

Whether much less poisonous fabric may be used;
Minimizing the stock for the garage of the fabric;
Procedure for secure storage of the gas with an enclosure device;
Provision of plant caution system;
Training for operators on properties, the impact of fabric; and
Informing neighboring localities approximately the poisonous impact.

The effects of the identification technique may be recorded as Hazard Causes Effects Preventive Measures.

How to do PHA in the site?

Let's See Practical example step by step.

Step 1. Establish a PHA team

A typical PHA team may consist of:

A team leader with competence and experience in the method to be used
A secretary who will report the results

Team members (2-6 persons) who can provide the necessary knowledge and experience on the system being analyzed

The team members who should participate will depend on the system and objectives of the analysis. Some team members may participate only in related parts of the analysis.

Step 2.Define and describe the system to be analyzed

System boundaries (which parts should be included and which should not)
System description with detailed layout drawings, process flow diagrams, block details and so on
Use and storage of energy and hazardous materials in the system
Operational and environmental conditions to be considered
Systems for Identification, prioritization and control of hazards and accident, emergency systems, and corrective & preventive actions.

Step 3.Collect risk information in the prescribed format

The results of the PHA are generally reported by a PHA worksheet (or, a computer software also used). A typical PHA format is shown below. Some analyses may require other columns, but these are the most common.

The format should be like Job Safety Analysis and HIRA or we may say its hybrid version of both. The main difference should be that JSA or HIRA should be done based on the actual scenario and here we will do it based on our primary design and projection.

Site Name		Date
Task Identified
Team Member

Sr.

Hazard

Probable accident event (What, Where, When etc)

Probable cause

Preventive action

Probability

(P)

Severity

(S)

Risk

(P x S)

Remark

Here Risk calculating format may vary in 3 scale - Low/ Medium/ High or 5 scales but the concept should be the same to calculate and priorities the risk for preventive actions.

Step 4. Identify the hazards for the system of step 2

All hazards and possible accidental events must be identified. It should be important to consider all parts of the system, operational modes, maintenance operations, safety systems, and so on. All findings shall be recorded. No hazards are too insignificant to be recorded. Murthy’s law must be borne in mind: “If something can go wrong, sooner or later it will”.

To get a complete survey of all possible hazards it may be beneficial to use a hazard checklist. Several checklists are available in the literature.

Step 5. Severity calculation of Hazard identified in step 4

An accidental event may lead to a wide range of consequences, ranging from negligible to catastrophic. for example a fire should be extinguished fast and give minor consequences, or lead to a catastrophe. In most applications, the severity of an consequence of an accident to be assessed. In other applications, we have to consider several possible consequences, including the worst foreseeable consequence derived by ETA or FTA of the accidental event.

The severity of an event may be classified into rather broad classes. An example of such a classification is:

Minor Failure results in minor system damage but does not cause injury to personnel, allow any kind of exposure to operational or service personnel or allow any release of chemicals into the environment.
Major Failure results in a low level of exposure to personnel or activates facility alarm system.
Critical Failure results in minor injury to personnel, personnel exposure to harmful chemicals or radiation, or fire or a release of chemical to the environment.
Catastrophic Failure results in major injury or death of personnel.
Disaster Failure results in the major outbreak which might impact out of the boundary specified and may impact people, employee, the environment at a larger scale

Step 6.Probability/ Frequency calculation of Hazard identified in step 4

The risk related to an accidental event should be a function of the frequency of the event and the severity of its potential consequences. To determine the risk, we have to estimate the frequency and severity of each accidental event.

The Probability/ Frequency of events may be classified into rather broad classes. An example of such a classification is:

Very unlikely Once per 1000 years or more seldom
Remote Once per 100 years
Occasional Once per 10 years
Probable Once per year
Frequent Once per month or more often

Step 7.Calculate and prioritize the Risk for CAPA:

The risk to be established as a combination of a given event/consequence and the severity of the same event/consequence. This will enable g of the events/consequences in a risk matrix.

Sort the task by risk score to prioritize them and decide Corrective Action and Prevention Action (CAPA). Make necessary changes in design, material, process and implement safety measures in the designing stage.

Practical .xls File is attached below via link and you may download it for better understanding.

PHA pros and cons:

Pros:

Helps ensure that the system should be safe
Modifications are less expensive and easier to implement in the earlier stages of design

Decreases design time by reducing the number of surprises

Cons:

Hazards must be foreseen by the analysts
The effects of interactions between hazards are not easily recognized

PHA / HIRA xls format