Learn the right practices for time-tested plant safety standards

Safety standard insights

• Following the appropriate safety standard — including OSHA regulations, ANSI fall-protection guidance and NFPA 70E — helps facilities select suitable equipment, conduct effective audits and establish practical policies. 
• A strong safety standard is reinforced through job safety analyses, prompt hazard reporting, worker and leadership engagement and corrective actions that prioritize engineering controls and eliminate hazards where possible.

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Respondents:

Lanny Floyd, PE, CSP, CESCP, CMRP, CRL
IEEE Life Fellow
Electrical Safety Group
Elkton, Maryland

Philip Jacklin, QSSP, OSHA-30
Continuing Education Program Manager
Diversified Fall Protection
Westlake, Ohio

Stephen Kelly, CSP
Senior EHS Manager
Hyster-Yale Materials Handling
Greenville, North Carolina

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What specific standards do you follow the most closely in your facility?

Philip Jacklin: Occupational Health and Safety Administration (OSHA) regulations are important, but employers must keep ANSI standards in mind to achieve comprehensive fall protection. The rule of thumb is that OSHA can tell you where and when to provide fall protection, but ANSI will help guide you into what products should be used and how to effectively use them.

Lanny Floyd: NFPA 70E: Standard for Electrical Safety in the Workplace.

How often do you conduct safety audits? What is your process for addressing audit findings? What are your primary safety policies and how are they communicated to employees?

Philip Jacklin: Again, vendors are an excellent source for auditing. A reputable vendor partner can help verify whether OSHA compliance is being met and make further suggestions to achieve full comprehensiveness for your fall protection program.

How do you identify and evaluate potential hazards in your manufacturing processes and what risk mitigation strategies do you employ?

Stephen Kelly: In my opinion, there is no substitute for the good old-fashioned job safety analysis (JSA). The most important thing to remember to make a successful JSA program is that once you have evaluated the task and understand the hazards, fix them. Once the employees see that the safety team is helping to make their job safer (and hopefully easier), they will bring more items to the team that they may have concerns about. You fix those and the whole team engages with the safety program. The cycle continues. You are mitigating hazards and preventing injuries and the safety culture couldn’t be stronger. I am a firm believer in a solid JSA process and activities that drive employee engagement. It is a perfect example of continuous improvement.

We also have implemented a QR code reporting system that we call the “safety rapid report.” The employees have been given badges that include the QR code and they’re able to immediately report any safety concern. That report immediately gets sent to the maintenance team, human resources, value stream managers, the plant manager and the environmental, health and safety team. This means that the plant manager has immediate visibility to any employee-reported safety concern. This helps to drive our safety culture and creates a sense of urgency to ensure concerns are addressed promptly.

Lanny Floyd: Engaging subject matter experts and workers familiar with the work activity.

Philip Jacklin: When we perform site walks, we like to get at least three roles involved in the conversation: the safety manager, the maintenance manager and a maintenance worker. The safety manager confirms applicable codes, policies or protocols should be followed; the maintenance manager confirms what work is being performed, where and how often; and a maintenance worker can give an honest account of how work is currently being performed. We create solutions that consider all three perspectives to ensure the final product is compliant, relevant and practical.

How does leadership demonstrate a commitment to safety and how do you foster a culture of continuous improvement in safety practices?

Lanny Floyd: By showing interest in the workers and what is needed to do work safely.

How do you develop and implement corrective actions following an incident and what steps are taken to ensure corrective actions are effective and sustainable?

Lanny Floyd: By emphasizing engineering design solutions to reduce exposure.

Philip Jacklin: It’s important to identify what factor(s) caused the incident, determine whether the factor is repeatable and then reconsider if hazard elimination or passive fall protection would be possible to improve the safety for that task happening in the future. A training session performed like an autopsy can help use the incident as a learning experience for everyone involved.

Looking ahead, what is one major change or improvement you would like to see in the PPE and fall protection industry?

Philip Jacklin: I would like to see rescue devices integrated into PPE. Many premium fall protection harnesses on the market integrate suspension trauma straps, but I’d like to see every single harness sold include them. Rescue efforts would be more effective because the worker can begin the process on their own while waiting for their crew to lower them.

Lanny Floyd: Designing facilities to reduce the need for working at height.

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