January 21, 2008—The American Society of Safety Engineers (ASSE) urges companies to start the new year by conducting a comprehensive safety, health, and environmental (SH&E) audit, which ASSE says is an important tool of a world-class safety program, contributing greatly to reducing on-the-job injuries and illnesses and protecting a company’s assets.
When conducting an SH&E audit, safety professionals should use a specific checklist or protocol that reflects internal conformance requirements, legal and regulatory compliance, and good industry- specific practice, notes ASSE. These tools will provide the basis for management decisions affecting the organization’s SH&E programs, and will identify loss leaders that impact a company’s bottom line and compliance gaps.
According to ASSE, a comprehensive SH&E audit process should include:
- reviewing the record of accidents, injuries, and illnesses sustained by employees since the previous audit;
- analyzing the resources devoted to identifying and controlling hazards, to employee training, and to safety motivation and recognition;
- ascertaining the extent to which various levels of management are actively involved in accident prevention;
- evaluating the results of physical inspections of the premises and observations of personnel performing operations that accident records show have been hazardous; and
- developing timely and effective corrective action plans to mitigate hazards identified during the audit in order to prevent reoccurrence.
The American National Standards Institute’s (ANSI) A10.39-1996 (R2005) standard Construction Safety and Health Audit Program, a standard which establishes an internal method of measuring safety and health program compliance, is a tool the construction industry uses for SH&E auditing.
