Page 38 - Occupational Health & Safety, January/February 2019

CONSTRUCTION SAFETY
2016 guidance program, “Recommended Practices for Safety and Health Programs.”4 Within the guidance, OSHA outlined sev- en core elements that suggest employers should integrate their efforts into a man- agement system that engages the entire site workforce in efforts beyond regulatory compliance.
OSHA’s seven Core Elements:
1. Management Leadership: Manage- ment provides the leadership, vision, and resources needed to implement an effective safety and health program.
2. Worker Participation: To be effective, any safety and health program needs the
meaningful participation of workers and their representatives.
3. Hazard Identification and Assess- ment: A critical element of any effective safety and health program is a proactive, ongoing process to identify and assess such hazards.
4. Hazard Prevention and Control: Ef- fective controls protect workers from work- place hazards and help employers provide workers with safe and healthful working conditions.
5. Education and Training: They’re im- portant tools for informing workers and managers about workplace hazards and
controls.
6. Program Evaluation and Improve-
ment: Once a safety and health program is established, it should be evaluated at least annually to assess what is working and what is not and whether the program is on track to achieve its goals.
7. Communication and Coordina- tion for Host Employers, Contractors, and Staffing Agencies: At multi-employer work sites, it’s important that host employers, contractors, or temporary staffing agencies consider how their work and safety activi- ties can affect the safety of other employers and workers at the site.
With this initiative OSHA is acknowl- edging that regulatory compliance alone will not get companies to the safest levels possible.
OSHA is not alone in its belief on how to implement better safety results through management systems—in ANSI Z10, OH- SAS 18001, and ISO 45001, other bodies are advocating for a management systems approach on “how” to implement better safety practices.
Regardless of whether they adopt the OSHA model or any of the other man- agement systems’ approach to contractor management, host employers and their contractors may be able to realize even greater success in workplace safety if they take a beyond compliance alone approach to safety/health continuous process im- provement.
Pat Cunningham, MS, Director of Safety & Auditing Services for BROWZ, LLC, has a master’s in Occupational Health & Safety Management and more than 25 years of ex- perience in the field of safety.
REFERENCES
1. Occupational Safety and Health Adminis- tration, Multi-Employer Citation Policy (CPL 2-0. 124), 1999, https://www.osha.gov/ pls/oshaweb/owadisp.show_document?p_ id=2024&p_table=DIRECTIVES
2. Best Practices in Contractor Management, Campbell Institute, 2015, https://www.the- campbellinstitute.org/research/
3. Making the Case for Contractor Management, National Safety Council, 2017, https:// www.nsc.org/work-safety/ser vices/research/ contractor-safety
4. Occupational Safety and Health Administra- tion, Recommended Practices for Safety Health Programs in Construction, 2016, https://www. osha.gov/shpguidelines/
www.ohsonline.com
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