Safety inspections to ensure a safe and healthy workplace

Effective safety and health inspections are one of the most important incident/accident prevention tools in a company’s safety and health management system. Using properly trained inspectors in a planned inspection program will reduce incidents and property damage.

Workplace safety inspection helps us to identify hazards and assess risk in the workplace on an ongoing basis. As part of a proactive injury-prevention process, inspections reveal the current state of the workplace and any activities that we can see and prevent unsafe working conditions from developing.

A comprehensive workplace inspection program may include daily inspections of equipment, initial startup inspections, walk-arounds of mobile equipment before use, daily and/or weekly supervisor inspections, and weekly and/or monthly departmental inspections. In addition to regularly scheduled inspections, there is a need to inspect workplace after an incident or when any new work process or new equipment has been introduced.

Inspections can be formal, informal, recorded or unrecorded. It is important that they are carried out to an agreed standard and at a suitable frequency.

More formal ways of carrying out inspections include

• safety tours – inspecting the workplace generally
• safety sampling – thoroughly examining specific dangerous activities, processes or areas
• safety surveys – generally inspecting specific dangerous activities, processes or areas
• incident inspections – looking at the cause of accidents, incidents and events that could have resulted in an injury or ill health.

Conducting an inspection

During an inspection, identify unsafe conditions and activities that may cause injury or illness, so that corrective measures can be taken. These are the necessary guidelines in conducting inspection.

• Use a checklist to ensure that the inspection is thorough and consistent with previous inspections.
• Ask yourself what hazards are associated with the job that you are observing or that would be performed in that work area.
• Observe how workers perform tasks. Do they follow safe work procedures and use personal protective equipment as required?
• Ask workers how they perform their tasks.
• Talk to workers about what they're doing. Ask them about concerns they may have about health and safety.
• Record any unsafe actions or conditions that you observe.
• Consider tasks that the worker may also perform that you did not observe.

Using Safety checklist

 A Checklist should inform inspectors what to look at and what to look for.

Things to consider during inspection:

1. Consider the following in the development of your checklists and guidelines:

ü plant or job site layout (areas where work activities take place) ;

ü building-structure ;

ü basic floor plan layouts with equipment and machinery ;

ü maintenance periods-shift work ;

ü start up and shut down times ;

ü hazardous substances used in the workplace ; storage areas exits

2. Operating standards or requirements within these areas:

ü legal requirements (OH&S Regulation, fire regulations, boiler pressure vessel, elevating devices etc.) ;

ü company rules/regulations ;

ü manufacturers’ specifications and instructions (maintenance and operating procedures) ;

ü personal protective equipment required (headgear, footwear, gloves, respirators, locks) ;

ü engineering controls(ventilation, guards etc.) ;

ü emergency procedures (fire, evacuation etc.) ;

ü first aid services and supplies.

3. Look at known problem areas and review records on the following:

ü accident investigations ;

ü first aid record books ;

ü worker complaints and reports on hazards in the workplace ;

ü recommendations made by safety and health committees ;

ü previous inspections

ü maintenance reports ;

ü What controls are used to ensure safe work practices and maintain conditions?

Follow-up and addressing issues identified during an inspection

It is equally as important to take action to remedy or correct any issues discovered during inspections as it is to identify them. Corrective action should be taken as soon as possible on any deficiencies noted in the inspections.

A follow-up system, through the safety committee and management, should be employed to ensure that all items are followed up and corrected. The primary focus of this inspection should be accident prevention, through the maintenance of safe working conditions and the removal of any potential hazards that arise in the workplace.

Article by Dr.Yashoda Tammineni,

MSc, Ph.D.

HSE,HOD at NIFS