Work Hazard Risk Management - The Safety & Numbers work safety blog

Budgeting for Work Injury Prevention & Safety Risk Management Strategy

As we begin to budget for strategic objectives in 2015, several work safety topics centered around an important theme come to light. Posts ranging from safety training to workers comp/EMR risk, the importance of conducting fall hazard assessments and engineering fall prevention design — each capture elements of what I believe to be the annual theme for our blog, and what may be the most notable national work safety theme of 2014: Preventive Safety Risk Management Strategy.

Comprehending and preparing for the preventive work safety trend will prepare you for 2015 budgeting and set your organization on the path towards a beneficial work safety culture. While this may sound complicated, strategy setting will become easier after considering the benefits of preventive safety strategy.

First, Consider the Benefits of Safety Risk Management

The concept of pursuing Injury Prevention tactics for Safety Risk Management is not a revolutionary approach, nor is it a simple strategy to follow. The motivation behind injury prevention strategies that minimize risk to reap long term safety benefit is based in the complementary advantages provided by a preventative safety culture. Risk prevention strategy involves foresight and planning, and requires a greater upfront investment cost. Over time it will result in fewer injuries, worker lost time reductions, improved workers comp rates, and other indirect savings and benefits. From this perspective, preventative safety risk management ultimately provides inherent value to businesses that are financially stable and well-managed. These businesses are typically set up to plan ahead strategically and invest accordingly. If they are able to effectively implement safety risk management strategy, they will thrive when compared to protection-focused strategies with stringent safety controls.

…then brainstorm Injury Prevention Strategies

The elements of successful injury prevention strategies are not unlike those of a typical work safety program, with respect to procedural elements. Hazard assessments, incident recording, policies and training remain standard work safety objectives. The subtle difference between injury prevention through safety risk management versus protection and control strategies is that prevention policies and controls are engineered to prevent risk, as opposed to simply identifying risk areas and protecting workers. For example, while injury risk hazard assessments are an element of most work safety programs, an overarching preventive strategy will interject that step into the initial processes of any new development or work activity. The goal is circumventing, not simply mitigating, potential risk areas. With this in mind, preventive strategy is most effective when work safety culture is established and new initiatives are supported by an acknowledged organizational safety commitment.

Preventive Safety Incentives & Training Ideas

In support of building a work safety culture that values and supports injury prevention ahead of protective measures, safety incentives should be structured to reward preventative innovation as opposed to strict adherence to performance metrics such as injury rates or lost time. For example, an organization might hold a contest that challenges employees to propose an injury risk prevention strategy that reduces injury risk for the work process that had the highest injury rate the previous year. This approach delivers the strategic preventative message while working to solve a problem, and also helps to increase employee commitment through involvement. Similarly, training documentation should emphasize the importance of avoiding unnecessary risks as much as utilizing the proper protective equipment or following the recommended procedure. In an injury prevention safety environment, the goal should be to efficiently avoid risks, not plow through them with precautionary measures.

Now You’re Ready to Budget Your Injury Prevention Risk Management Investments

We at the Safety & Numbers blog encourage you to invest in injury prevention engineering strategies and equipment as you write the 2015 budget. Establishing preventative work safety as a cultural value will not only offer the ‘usual suspect’ benefits (monetary expenses, less lost worker time, improved morale, etc.). Over time it will provide indirect benefits such as workers comp rate and hiring advantages. Need help with your injury prevention safety planning? Contact IAS

Attenuator Trucks for Highway Work Zone Safety

Attenuator trucks are highway safety vehicles equipped with an impact attenuating crash cushion for the purpose of reducing the risks resulting from crashes in construction work zones. These specialized vehicles are often required for government highway contracts to improve safety and reduce work zone fatalities.

The truck mounted attenuator, or TMA, is a crash cushion that is specifically designed to attach to a vehicle such as a snow plow, road construction vehicle or maintenance truck, in order to absorb kinetic energy if struck by a motorist. Not only do attenuator trucks save lives by absorbing the impact of a crash, they also reduce debris hazards after impact to improve traffic flow and reduce the risk to passing motorists.

TMAs are tested by the federal highway association for effectiveness and speed ratings. When mounted to road construction vehicles, TMA attenuators are subject to weight requirements and must be positioned at adequate distance to ensure the safety of workers and equipment in the event of a crash.

Attenuator Truck Equipment and Options

There are various types of truck mounted attenuators including tiltable or foldable options and trailer mounted attenuators. Tiltable options such as Trinity Industries’ MPS-350 are designed so that the attenuator will pivot up or down to engage or disengage the attenuating crash cushion. Foldable options such as the Safe Stop 180 will fold in half so that the attenuator is stacked on itself when disengaged. Trailer mounted varieties do not pivot or tilt and are always engaged when attached to a truck.

Road construction attenuator trucks typically have a bed for transporting equipment and an arrowboard or message board to instruct drivers of traffic conditions. Many other equipment options may be necessitated by the environment and conditions including strobe lighting for driver awareness, work lights for night visibility, and equipment racks.

Review a summary of attenuator truck options and equipment.

Fall Prevention Through Design: A Case Study from ASSE

Putting safety first applies not only in day to day operations, but also in the planning stages of new projects, investments and expansions. In 2012 ANSI/ASSE created a consensus standard to promote this mentality. Prevention Through Design as a concept in work safety began in the 1940’s and today has gained enough momentum and regulatory support to provide several models that prove its effectiveness. A recent article at ASSE.org charts the effectiveness of engineering safety controls in the design process while considering the defeatability of safety hazard risk.

The most effective controls include elimination, substitution and engineering solutions, each ideally suited to be planned in the design phase of new projects. Doing so will provide safety, productivity, and cost benefits. In fact, the cost of implementing fall prevention through design can be thousands of times less expensive than the same solution integrated post completion. Compromised solutions are often less effective, leaving hazard risks and associated costs.

Fall Prevention Design Case Study

The ASSE article provides a case study from a petrochemical organization building a new offshore platform. The company had experienced the challenges of implementing fall prevention after the design stage and instead chose to hire a fall protection consultant early on to assist the engineering design team. The combined expertise resulted in fall prevention safety measures that focused on productivity and risk abatement. The process consisted of the following steps.

Kickoff Meeting with Design team
Virtual Fall Hazard Risk Assessment
Design Team Workshops
Specification Binder for Hazard Abatements
Follow-Through During Construction Process

The benefits of foreseeing and engineering fall prevention through design are long term: safety advantages, productivity gains, and ultimately lower costs. The case study resulted in hazard risk controls addressing elevated platforms, floor openings, ladders, and stair guardrails, helping to prevent the need for PPE and optimize processes, equipment placement and usage. Indirect long term benefits included ‘less equipment purchases, less training and fewer elements to manage.’

Innovative Access Fall Prevention Design

Contacting a consultant while engineering an offshore platform was effective for the company from the ASSE case study. The consultant costs were compared favorably to erecting scaffolding, the cost of which would have been required to address just one of the safety risks post-completion. Innovative Access Solutions is available to contribute similarly during the design or redesign stages at your organization. IAS has worked with Fortune 500 companies as well as SMB businesses to design solutions that provide long term cost and productivity benefits and accomplish your safety goals. IAS designs ladders, platforms and fall prevention equipment and has provided solutions for a range of industries. For a brief review of our access solutions, visit us at IAScustom.com. Or call (800) 388-6884 to schedule an appointment with our team.

Shipyard Work Safety

Shipyard work safety programs for private sector businesses are generally under the jurisdiction of Federal OSHA regulations. The shipyard workplace environment presents a wide range of injury hazards including confined spaces, scaffolds and ladders, rigging, and equipment associated with painting, welding, and material handling. To help reduce the risks affiliated with these environments, Personal Protective Equipment is frequently recommended. OSHA has published a complete guide to Shipyard Industry Safety Standards with recommendations for small, medium, or large businesses.

Of particular interest to this blog are the shipyard safety standards provided for Scaffolds, Ladders, and Other Working Surfaces. In this post we will take a look at the training recommendations for work safety Hazard Identification, Assessment and Control, and also provide information about access products to meet OSHA requirements at shipyards.

Hazard Identification and Controls

We have discussed the importance of work hazard assessments on this blog. The published OSHA standards cover the basic policies of inspecting the workplace, evaluating the level of risk, and working with employees and management to identify and determine solutions to work hazards. In addition, OSHA provides valuable recommendations regarding how to manage risk associated with identified hazards in the short term while longer term solutions are being developed. Placing priority on hazard abatement timeframe is important, and interim solutions should be considered.

OSHA also emphasizes the importance of systematic processes, from checking injury logs in support of hazard identification, to using checklists during inspections and breaking down jobs into tasks to determine root causes of accidents or hazards. The Shipyard Standards document additionally provides a hierarchy of hazard prevention controls, starting with engineering and work practice improvements. These involve ‘physical changes to jobs’ and are the top level priority. When engineering controls are not feasible, or in support of engineering controls, administrative controls and personal protective equipment are to be considered next in the hazard prevention hierarchy.

Custom Shipyard Access Products from IAS

OSHA provides detailed requirements for scaffolds, ladders, deck openings and edges, and access to vessels, dry docks/marine railways, and cargo spaces. Innovative Access Solutions has provided shipyard work safety access products for each of these applications. A few of the OSHA-referenced access solutions include portable metal ladders, gangways, guardrails, platforms, access to lower levels, and ladders for accessing cargo areas or confined spaces. IAS is experienced, knowledgeable and available to help meet your shipyard access needs. Contact IAS at (800) 388-6884 to inquire about shipyard access products.

Workers Comp EMR Risk Management Sample Case

EMR, or Experience Modification Rate, is the most direct method of determining the effect that claim history has on the annual premium a business pays for workers’ compensation insurance. In technical terms, it is defined as follows.

The adjustment of annual premium based on previous loss experience. Usually three years of loss experience are used to determine the experience modifier for a workers’ compensation policy. The three years typically include not the immediate past year, but the three prior. Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Experience_modifier

An average Workers Comp EMR rate is 1.0. In essence, an average EMR means that the actual losses during a 3 year period is equal to the expected losses for that period. Since EMR functions as a multiplier, a company with an average EMR rate will pay precisely the calculated premium based on industry, number of employees, and other risk factors. From a work safety perspective, it would appear that these companies are effectively but not optimally preventing work injury hazards that drive EMR risk.

A Sample Workers Comp EMR Calculation

Workers’ comp EMR rates are lower or higher if a business incurs total losses that are lesser or greater than expected losses in the applicable 3 year time period. For example, a company with more losses than expected may have an EMR of 1.1, and thus their premium is 1.1 times the base premium for their business. At the same time, if that business experiences fewer losses over the next 3 year period, their EMR may be 0.9 and they will pay less than the base premium.

Minimum Workers’ Comp EMR and Controllable EMR

EMR values can and often do vary more than 0.1 above or below average. Each business has a minimum EMR that they can strive to reach in order to pay their lowest possible workers comp insurance premium. If Company XYZ has a Minimum EMR of 0.85 and a current EMR of 1.1, they have a Controllable EMR of 0.25 [1.1-0.85]. Here is where the bottom line effect should get the attention of business owners, as seen below.

Effective Safety Reduces EMR Risk and Saves Money

Effective work safety and EMR risk management has many positive effects. Improved morale, hiring and employee retention advantages, lost time reductions, and project timeline improvements to name just a few. While these factors are difficult to monetize, the bottom line effect of improved workers comp EMR and resulting workers’ comp premium savings illustrates how effective safety can be at providing long term profit advantages and improved cash flow. It’s clear that from a financial perspective, managing work safety is a win-win for businesses of all sizes or strategies.

Learn how to Lower Your Workers Comp EMR

Work Hazard Analysis

Identifying Workplace Hazards is an integral component of an effective work safety program. As a required element of OSHA VPP Program participation, following an organized hazard assessment process can be the backbone of a company’s safety policy. Identifying hazards provides the ability to mitigate risk and evaluate safety effectiveness.

The work hazard assessment process consists of five main components:

Identify Hazardous Condition
Hazards that can lead to injury or illness range from physical injury risk to chemicals, temperature, radiation, noise, and electrical. Employees need to be involved in hazard analysis from the beginning to assist with acceptance and recognition of benefit.
Determine Root Cause
Potential root causes can include lack of knowledge, lack of physical ability, improper training, or unidentified hazards. Managers should reassess hazards when new equipment is installed or new work processes developed.
Eliminate Hazards
Mitigate risks via controls based on level of injury risk, frequency of exposure, and potential harm. Evaluate the level of overall risk to prioritize controls and implement. Identify PPE (Personal Protective Equipment) such as gloves, safety glasses, etc.
Control Measures
Risk management efforts can include engineering controls to manage exposure, layout, and access; administrative controls to to manage employees, tasks, and training; and work practices for safety, hygiene, and work area cleanliness.
Evaluation of Effectiveness
Hazard assessment programs should be evealuated on injury prevention effectiveness. Evaluation tactics include routine inspections; documentation for injury reports and near misses; requesting, researching and responding to employee feedback.

Source: Marine Corp Community Services

Initiating a Work Hazard Analysis

When commencing hazard assessment, plan to document responsible team members, tasks, and step sequence for processes with injury risk. A Hazard Assessment checklist similar to this sample provided by the California Department of Industrial Relations may be helpful. Next, determine and document preventative measures, equipment, and Personal Protective Equipment, and train employees accordingly. Finally, consider residual risk – any risk that remains after controls have been implemented – for future evaluation and improvement.