SNIPS NEWS safety contributor Mike McCullion goes through a brief guide to safety program evaluations from the American Society of Safety Professionals.
In prior articles we have discussed the importance of safety programs, how to implement them correctly, and how to “measure” them using leading and lagging indicators. Inspection of the workplace is always a critical part of a safety program but “auditing” your program is also important. By auditing, we mean how to score your efforts to evaluate the objectives and effectiveness of the program. After serving on the ANSI/ASSP A10 Committee for over 10 years, I believe the standards and information they publish can be very useful to construction companies of all sizes. Sheet metal fabrication shops could benefit from the standards as well since the topics crossover in many ways.
One standard the committee worked on is A10.39 – Construction Safety and Health Audit Program. According to the American Society of Safety Professionals (ASSP), this standard “establishes an internal method of measuring compliance with an organization’s written safety and health program requirements.” A free project audit guide is available from ASSP at https://www.assp.org. This guide is basically Appendix A and B of the standard and provides some helpful information.