Since the month of June is National Safety Month and it’s focus this year is finding ways to reduce your risk, let’s focus specifically on how that can be done in the industrial workplace.
An article in Control Engineering Magazine raises and interesting point on the issue, “The solution to making your process plant a safer place isn’t something you can buy. Much of it depends on changing the ways your people work and think”.
The industrial environment presents a unique set of requirements when it comes to risk reduction. In fact the “objective might not be to eliminate risk entirely, but to reduce it to an acceptable level that will allow the plant to function while protecting people in the plant along with the community, environment, and equipment”. Understanding the hazards specific to your process is essential before you can assess its risk.
This often requires a technical and cultural effort. In order to have an effective risk reduction strategy, every level of the organization must understand the overall safety vision of their company. It should be ingrained in its everyday values and communicated to people working in all different areas and departments of the organization, in order to create a solid foundation of safety excellence.
Creating a safety culture within your company can be done through:
- functional safety management
- providing a comfortable operating environment
- using effective alarms
- integrated control and safety systems
“When careful people work with a safe attitude driven by a sound culture using well-maintained equipment and appropriate work practices, safe and reliable production will become a way of life”.
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