Page 93 - Occupational Health & Safety, October 2018

and apply to safety.
Intangible costs are calculated by identifying unquantifiable
expenditures and relating them to a known source or tangible pro- jected outcome. For example, an unsafe workplace can yield intan- gible costs such as a loss of productivity due to sagging employee morale and high turnover, which can result in higher tangible costs for hiring and training.
Intangible costs are not entirely indefinable or theoretical; they are merely less tangible than direct costs. Government agencies commonly assign intangible costs to justify regulations intended to improve safety. Economic impact statements are used by regula- tors to justify the tangible cost to industry by weighing the intan- gible impact—and projected long-term cost—on society. However, managers and accountants have been trained to think about saving direct costs to justify investments.
Traditionally managers with monthly budgets cut direct costs to support short-term investments and stay within annual spend- ing limits. Long-term investments that don’t fit current institu- tional strategies for spending typically don’t make the capital expenditure list. The private sector’s stubborn adherence to the bottom line and disregard for intangible costs of risk are some of the reasons that efforts to elevate safety to a reasonably acceptable level have plateaued.
Equipping for the Future
Despite bulk material handling being one of the most globalized
industries, there are no standardized methods of measuring safety. This makes industry-wide safety performance comparisons and defining best practices very hard to implement.
Conveyors and other process systems are designed to handle a specified range of raw material properties and volumes. However, to improve financial returns, it is common practice for bulk materi- al handlers to revert to purchasing lower-quality raw materials and increasing capacity or to cutting maintenance staff and budgets. Without forethought to the cost of future modifications, operators often find that cheaper equipment cannot be changed or main- tained to work efficiently under the new conditions. When convey- ors don’t operate efficiently, they have unplanned stoppages, release large quantities of fugitive materials, and require more mainte- nance. Emergency breakdowns, cleaning of excessive spillage, and reactive maintenance all contribute to an unsafe workplace.
Safety is a continuous improvement process of risk reduction that typically shows results over a longer period of time than the typical plant manager’s budget cycle. Risk can be stated as the prob- ability of an incident multiplied by the severity of the incident. Se- verity can be measured in terms of the cost, so improving safety is an exercise in reducing the probability or exposure and the severity.
Safety Pays
Literature and research offer many pieces of the puzzle on how safety pays, showing the relationships between design and a clean and efficient conveyor. Numerous case studies revealing the posi-
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