Display boards - its importance

Many times, persons question about the importance of bill boards, its utility and money spent is considered as waste. Questions are also raised about, does the reader / viewer is serious to understand and follow.

Apprehension were particularly w.r.t. posters, slogans, etc. 

The way bill boards attract about products / entertainment visuals, the same way boards with preaching may not attract.

However, over a period of time, suddenly, a realization may come to the viewer by comparing his/her own experience and it strikes them for better. 

For that particular moment to arrive, it can be immediate or it may take months/years together. Again, over a time, persons will forget. But, these displays act as a reminder.

Till such time, though it looks simple, the meaning is not understood. 

We have to remember that slogans / proverbs are the outcome of somebody's experience or forethought. These are same as rules and regulations made after observing so many incidents / events.

Hence, we should give sufficient thought, have creativity to make attractive boards for personnel to see and understand at the earliest so that it helps them to follow for better, helps in day-to-day activities, develops attitude and safety culture. 

Importance of readily available data for preventing disasters - an article

Recently, I came across an article from Kinsmen Group, as given below. It discussed the importance of readily available data on workplace activities and incidents to prevent workplace disasters and protect the employees. It is called smart data, in the news item. 

Following are some of the issues and observations made (data seems to be for USA):

1. As per OSHA and Labour department, in the year 2019, more than 5000 persons died 9,00,000 were injured at workplace.
2. Companies spend an average USD 7,500 for each lost-time workplace injury (we can call this as direct cost). Other costs consist of replacement of damaged equipment, reconstruction of facilities, compensation, etc. (As per theory, direct cost is only like a tip of the iceberg. And, cost of preventing an accident will be only about one fourth of the direct cost).
3. As per National Safety Council, cost of workplace injuries in the year 2018 was USD 170 billion.
4. Each fatality costs USD 1.0 million in medical costs, employer costs, and wage losses
5. In a fatal fire and explosion incident, it seems, the emergency personnel do not have information of chemicals involved, otherwise, they could have saved the lives. 
6. Digitization and availability of data easily is not yet compulsory by many certification agencies. Organizations follow data retrieval in general age old methods like physical search instead of going for easy methods by using the computer/cloud technology/internet
7. Data should be latest

Many of us definitely would have spent a lot of time in search of some information. It is my personal experience that on most of the occasions, I spent more than two hours to retrieve, and sometimes more than one person was engaged for information retrieval. And, on some occasions, I didn't find what I want. Availability of signed information will help us to support what remember/believe and use it to convince others for implementation of safety or whatever we would like to.

Digitizing the records with a provision to search will be helpful for us and our future generation. Some believe digitization means scanning the documents. But scanning without search option makes it useless. It is a primitive form. Instead of paper search, we have to search in computer page by page. Indexing these types of scanned pages may make life somewhat better. But, if scanning of documents is in readable text form to enable search with key words, and is available in encrypted form in cloud, like dropbox, mega, onedrive, pcloud, etc and is accessible with password protection to prevent unauthorized access, it will help a lot for productive use. 

Searchable scanned records helped us greatly in the analysis of similar incidents and find suitable solutions to prevent recurrence of the incidents for a safe workplace  

Updating of data is a continuous process. 

Knowledge management is very important and critical to ensure safe productivity. World renowned safety professional Dr Trevor Kletz stated in one of his books (What Went Wrong) that incidents keep repeating either in the same or different similar organizations. We have to learn from them and implement measures to prevent recurrence.

Another safety professional Mr O.P.Kharbanda stated in a booklet about Bhopal accident, that Safety is not costly. In fact, it is free. What we need is the will to implement. 

In one of the investigation reports, EPA made an observation which states, it is not the lack of knowledge that is responsible for the accident. It is the lack of use of the available information that is responsible for the accident.

How we can get the information at first place. If it is made available in a readily searchable form and is known the personnel how to use it, then this information management will help to achieve what we intended to.

Qualified technologies and personnel should be assigned for this and definitely organizations will reap the benefits from this.

https://www.prweb.com/releases/two_strategies_help_prevent_workplace_disasters_protect_employees_with_smart_data/prweb17681313.htm

2020: A review

This year's happenings are like those that happen once in a lifetime. It can be like those faced during world wars. With the imposition of lockdown in the country to tackle the covid pandemic, we could not go out for days together, and then we hand night curfews, limited mobility, etc. We do not have any idea about the extent to which the virus can harm. Hence, there were rifts even families about measures to be taken. 

Coming to industrial safety, with the shutdown of operations, movement of many migrant workforce to their native places, these persons suffered to reach their destination. And then the organizations too suffered due to lack of working hands. 

In some organizations, due to not following safe procedures for shutdown, emergency maintenance, or safe restart, a few incidents took place leading to loss of lives or injuries. Still, many organizations are having problems reaching the state of pre-covid. 

And, then a covid variant surfaces now, as a parting gift of the year. What comes in the new year, we have to wait and see. 

However, some benefits are also accrued as organizations tried to have work from home wherever possible, or implementation of remote work methods to avoid movement/contact and in the process reducing operational costs. 

There is a saying which goes, whatever happens, is for our good. May be present phase is also like that. Let us hope for the best.

Distraction to drivers from bill boards on the roads

Today, I was driving to workplace. Enroute, while glancing at advertisements, I narrowly missed hitting a pedestrian. The lady crossing the road stopped and was looking at me, whereas I was watching billboard located at height, thereby missing the road view totally. It is mistake on my part. I also felt like there should not be any distraction to the drivers. Drivers should concentrate on the road traffic and possibly these billboards for others in the vehicles. Else, there can be accidents or near miss incidents like I had today.

End of financial year - some to do listing

As the end of March month is approaching, industrial establishments will be working at frantic pace to meet their annual financial year production targets. It is likely that here and there safety requirements are skipped thereby increasing the risk.

It is better to plan testing of equipment like cranes, hoists, other material handling equipment, pressure vessels, safety relief valves, calibration of instruments,  inspection and repairs of structures and buildings, painting of equipment/piping/structures, preventive maintenance of equipment, load centres, transformers, PDBs, DG sets; cleaning of drains, etc in the beginning of the financial year at which time stress levels are supposed to be low compared to the last quarter of a financial year. Even refresher courses can be planned and conducted wherein managers will relieve their staff to attend the programmes. 

This will facilitate ensuring readiness of men and machinery and other infrastructure for safe work without accidents, incidents.

Safety monitoring should be done more stringently during peak production periods which will indicate the safety culture of the organization in times of pressures all around.

Need for fire NOC should be made compulsory for all buildings irrespective of heights and nature of activities

As per legislations, generally, fire no objection certificate (NOC) is issued by concerned fire service department, if the height of the building is above 15 m.
However, this requirement needs to be changed to all buildings, irrespective of height and use.
Many fire incidents are attributed to short circuits, as we read from news papers.
Some incidents are due to materials handled in the buildings, and these buildings / dwellings are not necessarily above 15 m height.
Many use part of the house/commercial complex as storage of substances, solvents, fire crackers, etc legally / illegally.
Some may not intend to use the building initially for dangerous substances, but later on, may use for the same. The initial conditions are not valid, later.
All the above, make one to feel it necessary for legislations that require fire NOC, apart from other requirements, mandatory.

Explosion in detonator factory during disposing of rejected detonators from explosives

In an explosion in one of the largest explosives exporting factory, during separation of rejected detonators from explosives by cutting wires, a mechanical cutter fell down on the explosives below causing the blast leading loss of two lives and injuring 13 others with some of them receiving severe burns.

One of the injured suffered hearing loss during the incident.

The site was visited by State Home Minister, Police and other officials.

Police registered case under various sections of IPC (Indian Penal Code) for negligent act and others leading to personal harm and initiated the probe.

As per reports, the persons doing the job were retired employees as contract workers having experience.

There were also reports of demanding for shifting of the factory from residential premises.

There were some fatal incidents earlier also in the last 10-15 years.

To avoid such incidents, possibility of  automation of removal of rejected detonators needs to be explored.

As the cutter fell down below on explosives during the job, and it is likely that such slippages can happen, suitable path for shifting of material below as soon detonator is separated from the explosive material for every explosive or collecting the explosive material under water or any other medium has to be seen.

Governments have to ensure that industrial areas are well separated from residential areas. There should a sort of no habitat zone between industries and residential areas. It is natural that wherever development is there, the surroundings will see growth of residential areas with a view to gain from real estate price increase. 

Definitely, large industrial complexes would have been set up far away from residential areas at that time. Earlier remote places would have become part of the present cities due to growth. Shifting of industries also will be costly and who will foot this cost. 

Hence, a policy as suggested above is required with marked zones and no-man zones.

Safety work permit - violation of conditions

 Safety work permits are issued after ensuring that the site conditions are suitable for safe work. Check points are verified and are certified for start of work. However, still sometimes accidents take place indicating that either job hazard analysis is not done properly, conditions are altered during the course of work, workmen are not briefed about hazards and measures to be taken, many times they are not aware of what is written in the permit and simply do the work as they were told or as they can do, lack of supervision, etc.
In a huge manufacturing facility, a number of works will be going on and generally, the supervisor will be monitoring more than one work at any given time. In such a condition, at least, emphasis should be given to training to the persons engaged. All are not of superman category.
But, when earnings are motive, all other aspects take back seat. Many times, procedure for selection of the contractor or agency to do the outsourced work is the culprit. If selection is made without assessing the competency of the person/agency for safe execution of work, without checking the credentials, without giving proper description of the work, then we will get a wrong person in most of the cases.
In some cases, trainees are placed directly on to the job without proper class room training and supervision. This also leads to accidents as they are in the organization to learn, initially in the class room and then to have on the job training under supervision. Sometimes, these trainees even will be manning the shifts, particularly at night times when availability of regular work force is less and may be when nobody watches. Though, this is disastrous, shop floor managers take such decisions without taking the concurrence of higher ups. If seniors also give consent, then it is silly and such persons should be terminated or they should be asked to supervise instead of posting trainees for manning the shifts / works.

ATTENTION ONLY TO PRODUCTION CAN LEAD TO DETENTION.
ATTENTION TO SAFE PRODUCTION WILL SURELY LEAD TO CONGRATULATIONS.

Ego - obstacle to safe practices

Generally, safety professionals have advisory role. Any advise from company's safety professional(s) may be taken with good heart, reluctantly accepted because of pressure from top management or will be rejected vehemently. Sometimes, safety professionals will be questioned about their knowledge/experience/capability in matters of production activities and production managers try to draw a line saying that they are more capable of taking care of their work and also of safety in their work place and that they do not need any advise from safety professionals.
However, when some incident happens, safety professional of the company will become the first target of these production managers, saying that they were not sufficiently warned about the hazard, that the safety professional slept without doing his job, and so on. This will be the case even if there were some incidents in the work place.
Surprisingly, sometimes, even regulators too question safety professionals of the company instead of engaging the production managers for safety related lapses in the work place.
The ego in the minds of production managers (and down below) is an obstacle to listen to the voice of safety professional and this endangers safety of employees in the work place. They do not accept the fact that there is something (mindset to see the dangers and to learn lessons from events) missing on their part leading to occurrence of nearmisses, incidents and accidents. Any occurrence is taken as onetime affair and is not acknowledged for system deficiencies. Even efforts will be made to cover up the issues or not to bring to the notice of safety professional for investigation and thus do not want to learn lessons.
The case studies, lessons from occurrence that are freely available in the internet are taken as too theoretical or that these are not applicable to their work place. Nobody can help such managers and those working under them will only become easy prey to the hidden dangers.

Manage Change before it manages you

I read above quotation somewhere and noted in a pocket diary. Today, while going through the book I found this again.
Many changes take place everywhere and we carry out those changes most of the times to meet immediate requirement rather than analyzing for hidden dangers (or side effects). My colleague's brother who was a scientist during his government service used to say, 'what is temporary today is permanent'.
Safety professionals will be facing problems in convincing the shop floor managers to carryout proper hazard analysis and many times, the reply will be that they need clearance to execute so and so job and later it will be removed or it will be taken up for study.
There were a number of examples listed by reputed safety professional Trevor Kletz in his books like, What Went Wrong, Still Going Wrong, Learning from Disasters, etc, where many incidents took place because of improper or no evaluation of hazards.  Management of change is an important aspect in industries without which, we may end up with unforeseen events.
Sometimes, even shop floor workers too will find safety department an obstacle to their production job because of questions raised on safety, though, if something wrong occurs, it is the safety professional who will be questioned for not being authoritative or not active.
Hence, whatever be the nature of change or modification proposed, let it be process parameters, raw materials, equipment, or its accessories, auxiliary services, supports, or even operators, one should carry out a detailed analysis for hazards, impact on operation due to lack of knowledge/training/behavior, etc and then only proceed if satisfied with the results.

Can we have better surveillance cameras to monitor secured areas?

It is common to see CCTV cameras at important places to monitor the movements of suspicious persons. These are located in super markets, restricted areas, traffic zones, bus stations, railway stations, airports, etc. On many occasions, after the occurrence of an incident, the footage from these helped to nab the culprits. But, the videos that we see in TVs are of poor resolution and less speed. It is beyond my knowledge why it is so and why high resolution cameras can't be installed for surveillance. Normally, the domestic cameras which we use provide good pictures of objects that are at distance, when we zoom. No doubt, the memory occupied by these high resolution pictures will be more and thus require large storage space, but it is affordable and cost should not be an issue when it is with regards to security and safety.
During accidents / incidents, cameras installed at important and critical operation areas also show how they occurred, even if the employees lie about them fearing punishment. This will help in accident investigation and help the organization to take preventive measures.

Process Safety Management - for whom?

Everybody says process safety management (PSM) without knowing or having commitment. Many may be thinking it as day-to-day plant operation. In this regard, to identify, evaluate and control hazards in chemical plants, OSHA has given guidelines and can be read here.
It must be understood that by doing PSM, we are doing favour to ourselves and not to others. Even, production cost can be brought down, if we do PSM sincerely and follow it. If we do not care to spillages/leakages of chemicals, air, steam; do not care to study in detail before going for a new process / chemical / modification; do not make checklists for operations, then it means that enough attention is not paid for plant operations and it adds to cost of production by way of wastage, inefficient operation, accidents, and so on.
We should not feel like Alice in the wonder land when the unidentified hazards manifest into incidents/ accidents. One may feel stressed to follow the safety principles all the while. But, the stress will be more and can also lead to penalties and punishments when there is loss of life/damage to environment/property.
Many times when we land into simple accidents outside factory, we vow not to repeat such mistakes. But, when we commit such mistakes in a factory, the consequences will be very high and at that time we can move the time back to correct our mistakes. There is no time machine yet available to correct ourselves otherthan following safety principles in toto.

Leniency to violators by authorities

Every day, we see reports of many accidents, incidents, violations by factories. There will be hue and cry for lenient attitude / laxity on the part of the regulating authorities. There will be injuries/fatalities/release of fumes, gases from plant to public domain/dumping of chemicals in the night in public areas/failure of containment from tankers, etc. Immediately, regulators are found fault for not keeping eye on violators. Regulators also visit the affected areas, factories and say that there is no licence for operation or matter is under investigation or notices are slapped, etc. The issue will be left. Media also will leave it as the importance is lost after the item is aired in all channels.
This is not happening in our country alone. When we see reports appearing in several websites of different countries, we come to know that this is worldwide phenomenon. Even, in countries where regulators are tough nuts, stiff penalties are imposed, still accidents/incidents/violations continue to occur and reasons seem to be silly. Though, many do not agree now-a-days that 'safety is nothing but common sense', still that common sense alone can prevent many accidents.
We are all greed and want to save few bucks by following short cuts. Finally, after sometime, everybody would have experienced a huge loss because of one accident and the loss far exceeds all savings accrued so far from short cut methods. Still, the lessons are confined to the affected individual alone and again the same individual will bypass safety after sometime, because our memory is short.
In such a situation, what a regulator can do is the big question, when we do not have self discipline. Then, we have to face the consequences and suffer.

Whether safety procedures cause stress at workplace

Sometimes I hear shopfloor people grumbling at safety supervisors that by seeing them, B.P. increases in shopfloor workers. Others say that they are afraid that safety manager will come to them to enquire on some issue. Shopfloor supervisors advise safety persons not to approach their workers directly to avoid undue stress. All such talk or apprehensions appear to be unwarranted unless people do not follow safety procedures or the safety man talks in a dominating manner.
Some safety professionals too think that they get truth, if they pose like a  tough guy. But, with my own experience, I can say that this is not true. Whatever the shopfloor person is willing to tell will escape from the scene next time as soon as he sees the tough talking safety guy. The smooth talking safety supervisors also should be careful that they are not taken for granted. They have to develop friendly networks in all departments so that before entering the shopfloor to enquire about unsafe conditions or investigate accidents / incidents, full information is obtained through these friendly networks.
When someone gives information on phone, safety person should not insist to know the name of the person so that he will feel secured and will have peace of mind. If he is willing, then safety person can declare his sources and also recommend for some appreciation and reward.
Stress will be felt by safety guys also when all shopfloor people surround him questioning his failure to identify and communicate hazards. This, I think should be handled by being visible in the shopfloor through frequent inspections,giving pep talks as often as it warrants and making the people to know about their responsibilities under law. Then, safety department persons will be viewed as their friends and get their help to solve safety issues at the shopfloor.
Workers will be stressed for other reasons also as it was mentioned in a news paper article today that spouse causes more stress than the boss. Again, males cause more stress to their spouse than the female. Other reasons for stress can be ill health, unfulfilled ambitions,  family issues, etc

Safety violations are found, then why the plants are allowed to run?

In an article at http://www.safetyxchange.org/, I read that there were more than 700 violations of safety, operation and environment found by OSHA, EPA and other regulating agencies. It was questioned about the compulsions or need for allowing the unit to operate though so many violations were found before the spillage itself. Many times, regulators identify violations and give time to rectify or pay penalty later for continued violations. Only a few times, unit operations were suspended or stopped. This creates a lenient attitude by managements that outweigh profits over the loss of production suffered because of suspension of unit operations to carryout works for rectifying the violations. After some accident / incident occurs, we repent for not doing the right thing before the event. This like applying the balm after burning rather than avoiding the burns itself.

If plant operations are stopped after allowing some time to correct, then everybody will fall in line and though it looks difficult to achieve safety discipline and people are scared of immediate losses, long term benefits will outweigh these losses and every one will follow the directions of regulators. Or they will not give chance for regulators to find safety violations and a system of identification and rectification will be established by the organizations themselves.