Top 50 Risk Management Blogs

Listed below is the link on top 50 risk management blogs of which I follow the 7th blog i.e Risk and Safety Blog that gives some ideas of risk assessment and an understanding of the risk.

http://www.mastersinriskmanagement.org/top-50-risk-management-blogs.html#7

Recurrence of accidents - lack of safety culture

We read a number of industrial and road accidents in news papers. It appears that we never learn and never want to learn also. In factories, we do not follow even the well laid out rules of various statutes and established procedures and on the road, we do not respect the others on the road. We are in hurry always and we do not want to start a bit early. Even if the other person on the road is wrong, if we avoid showing our road rage, we can avoid many of the accidents.

In the factory, regular monitoring of operating parameters, keeping an ear for the noises from the machines,motors, agitators, equipment; monitoring process and storage inventories; leaving the aisles free from obstructions, interacting with shop floor employees, self discipline by employees, etc can reduce accidents. But, most of the supervisors and engineers appear to be stuck to the tables. When there is no monitoring, then it leads to bypassing of procedures, wrong reporting and complacency. This also gives a wrong signal to new recruits.

Most of the plant layouts also appear to be congested. We put more and more equipment in the same area  and whatever planned during initial setup with sufficient space will not be seen after future capacity additions. This congestion also leads to unsafe conditions and can endanger the lives of employees in emergency.

If the rot is not attended in the beginning stage, then even the best management expert can't do anything. When we compromise the above safety issues for the fear of unrest, union problems, unrealistic production goals, then so be it and see the deterioration of safety culture and one day, you may close the shop temporarily for a few months or permanently.

Fatality at a Zirconium-Titanium Facility

It is reported that two persons died in a facility that handles zirconium-Titanium. Read the information from the link here. The incident occurred during packing of titanium powder into bricks. Federal Investigators Seek Cause Of Fatal Hancock Co. Blast - News Story - WTOV Steubenville. CSB in a statement stated that it is deploying 4-member investigating team. Internet search shows some accidents/injuries during the handling of pyrophoric materials, in which some useful information can be found in these links. LINK1, LINK2. 

1. Zirconium, titanium, thorium and other metal fires have great potential to cause injuries and fatalities as the thermal radiation can initiate fires in the surrounding areas. They can easily ignite and explode when subjected to friction/impact. It is well known that explosions be devastating in confined spaces. 
2. In combination with insufficient water, the metal fires can grow bigger due to release of hydrogen and can also cause sputtering leading to flying of burning splinters all around (some times to a few hundred meters distance - source: internet search) and cause secondary fires.
3. The zirconium fires are intense and bright and can cause retinal damage when viewed with naked eye. The fire once initiated can reach great heights in no time depending upon the quantity of material involved and size, when turnings are involved. It is reported extensively in literature and NFPA that metal powder/dust can cause dust explosion and friction is sufficient to initiate this.
4. TEC powder in portable extinguishers is effective only for small fires and big fires can be extinguished only by application of large quantities of water from all directions by experienced fire fighters. Further, continuous watch for at least a day is required after extinguishing as it is likely that the material under the heap can keep burning for a long time.
5. As per the safety advice mentioned in MSDS/NFPA, and as it is with any chemical, lesser the inventory, the more safer it is. We can't sit assuming that everything is safe when we are only storing and not handling / processing, which proved very costly during the famous Bhopal accident.
6. Pyrophoric materials need very little energy to catch fire / explode and it is stated that the static charge accumulated on a person is sufficient to initiate fire of this dust/powder. For a safe work place, it is recommended to use antistatic apparel, provide earthing to discharge static charge on the equipment/containers, flameproof/explosion proof electrical fittings, maintain at least 60% humidity, etc in the work area.
7. The powder generated should be incinerated every shift / day (depending upon the quantity) under controlled conditions so that the material can be rendered safe and can be disposed off as landfill.

Training and its effectiveness

Training the employees for skills is a major task for any organization. And imparting skills to do the work safely is much more bigger task. Generally, class room safety training provides only basics, do's and dont's, SOPs, etc along with case studies. But, for the person to work safely, on the job training i.e. shopfloor training can be effective rather than class room training. And the person under on-the-job training requires proper guidance and supervision till he understands the implications and is moulded. This type of training may be costly for the managements as the number of persons trained under one instructor will be limited to a few at any given time. If the number of trainees increases, then the amount of time and attention by the instructor on each of the trainee will be reduced.

Though, nobody is interested in getting involved in accidents, still the occurrence of accidents indicate about the lack of knowledge and may be complacency developed over a period of time. With the on-the-job training and subsequently effective supervision can lead to accident-free workplace.

New EPA tool to assess safety of chemicals

The LINK does not give much information other than reporting the development. However, we can keep checking the EPA website for latest news and its applicability to chemicals in our work place.

Bhopal Accident - One more year passed!

Another year passed to count on Bhopal accident. After the Bhopal accident, we can recount the accidents at HPCL, Vizag and IOCL, Jaipur where human lives are lost in double digit. We do not know, how many are going to happen at any time. We may think that we are doing pretty well on safety matters, but it is the luck and time factor rather than our safety alertness that accidents of great magnitude did not happen.

All of us know what to do to avert an accident, but complacency and wrong priorities make us to delay immediate actions for improving safety at workplace.

In the West, well established industrial organizations saw occurrence of accidents, though there safety record is at its best till the occurrence of the accident.

Though, incentives do not lead to permanent safety solutions, still we can offer significant incentives to employees who point out hazards and those responsible for allowing those hazards should be punished parallelly.

Too much freedom and associated inaction should not be tolerated in any hazard installation and wrong doers should be handled severely.

The Safety Officer's Perspective - Fire Engineering

Please go through the following link.

Number of safety officers in a hazardous plant - statutory and practical requirements

Safety officers in any hazardous installation are appointed as specified in statutes, which say that factories where 1000 or more persons are employed, safety officer should be appointed. When the employee strength exceeds 2000, for every additional 1000 employees, one safety officer should be employed with 500 or more employees rounded to 1000. For major hazard installations, factory inspector can specify the number of safety officers irrespective of employee strength. Accordingly, the number of safety officers for various employee strength will be as follows:

Employee Strength        No. of safety officers

Upto 1499                             1
1500-2499                            2
2500-3499                            3
3500-4499                            4
5499-6499                            6
8499-9499                            9 and so on.

In some states, rules are framed as one safety officer for every 3000 employees is to be engaged.
As per Maharashtra Safety Officers Rules, 1982; the no. of safety officers required is,
1000-2000    1
2001-5000    2
5001-10000  3
>10000         4

But, in reality safety professionals find it difficult to manage safety aspects with so many employees in a factory, particularly where the operations are varied and complex, and with a large number of departments. The duties of safety officers include carrying out / conducting,

• inspections if not every day but atleast once in a week
• issue of safe work permits
• permission for modifications, changes, erection/commissioning of new equipment/process, etc
• job hazard analysis
• safety meetings in every department
• apex safety committee meetings
• safety audits
• accident/incident investigation
• training
• safety awareness programmes
• safety seminars
• followup with departments for compliance with recommendations of various committees
• safety studies like HAZOP, ETA, FTA, HIRA, etc
• coordination with regulatory agencies
• preparation and filing reports as per statutory requirement
• updating and maintaining records
• PPE procurement
• office safety (of various departments)
• contractor safety
• and so on

In some factories, safety officer will be asked to manage fire safety and environment mangement also which will increase administrative work load.

The work load increases depending upon the number of departments / sections, safety officer has to deal with. For example, if the number of employees in a factory having 4-5 departments is 4000, the work load for 4 safety officers appointed as per statutory requirement will be somewhat less compared to the work when the number of department is, say 30-40 as the complexity will increase both in technical and administration. The problem multiplies for the safety officers when his colleague in the safety department proceeds on leave as they have to look after safety aspects temporarily during the leave period.

Technical difficulties are in the form of wide variety of operations and administration difficulties are in the form of dealing with a number of shop floor/section/department heads. As the number of employees and departments increase, the levels of officers will increase and accordingly safety officers have to deal from lower to top level in orderly fashion and this increases work load enormously. Shop floor person can say he is doing as per his next level supervisor instructions and if safety officer directly talks to top and next level person, he can say he is not aware or instruct the safety officer to talk to lower level in-charges.

Added to the above, is contractor workers and their safety. Normally, contractor workers are engaged for doing various petty jobs and sometimes for regular plant operations and civil works. The real difficulty is that they will be working at different places on same day or at different periods and therefore job hazard analysis for their jobs and ensuring their safety is a tough task.

Though there are safety coordinators in some factories who do production and safety coordination with the safety department, in practice these safety coordinators give importance to production activities and thus safety at workplace rests with the safety department.

Though, Factories Act and its Rules say the duty of safety officer is to advice and assist, in reality, safety officer ends up in doing the jobs and in some factories, he will be asked to eliminate the hazards also by engaging few contractor workers, i.e., he has to identify and eliminate. After sometime, this may lead to not doing the jobs even as per Factories Rules and cause a dangerous work place for employees.

In view of the above, I feel that the legislations regarding number of safety officers should be reviewed and revised taking into account of number of employees and number of departments as below:

• One safety officer for every 500 employees upto 2000 employees or every 5 departments and thereafter
• one safety officer for every 250 employees

With the above, the no. of safety officers can be as follows

Upto 500         1       2501-2750       7        4001-4250        13
501-1000        2       2751-3000       8        4251-4500        14
1001-1500      3       3001-3250       9        4501-4750        15
1501-2000      4       3251-3500      10       4751-5000        16 and so on.
2001-2250      5       3501-3750      11
2251-2500      6       3751-4000      12

The employee strength should be taken as maximum number (including contractor workers, casual workers, etc) supposed to work at any given time. To ensure safety, atleast one safety officer should be available in shifts other than general shift, including Sundays and holidays.

With the above, I feel that safety department can function effectively to ensure a safe work place.


 

Superman in India

DO NOT TRY THIS ANY TIME, ANY WHERE.

Superman in India

LINK

Responsibilities and limitations of regulators

Recently, I read in local news papers about the fire in a chemical plant. It is stated that during distillation of a chemical to supply to a factory, water entry caused explosion causing serious injuries to four workers. A visiting representative expressed his anger on the concerned Inspector of Factories for allowing the factory to run without permission. The licence for the factory expired a few years ago. Regional Pollution Control Board (PCB) also suspended the operations after a fire incident a year before. The anger of the representative is justified. That the plant was closed by PCB after a fire incident, two years after expiry of licence indicates that the plant was in operation all along.

But, on the other side, what are the resources available to the factory inspectors. What are the powers available to the inspectors. When an inspector identifies a plant with dangerous conditions or without valid licence, he will stop the operations. But, how to ensure physical stopping of operations. The factory inspector can't become watchman for the factory to ensure this. If that is the case, then for every factory or a few factories, one inspector is required. At this rate, the factory department needs hundreds of factory inspectors which is not at all possible because of lack of funds. This is a system failure.

If a factory is run inspite of stopping orders, then the occupier is liable along with the authorities responsible for continuing to supply services likes electricity, water, etc. Similarly, municipality, revenue, police, excise, customs departments which collect taxes and other service charges are also responsible. They can't work independent of other agencies. Once these agencies are intimated about a factory closure, all concerned have to keep check on the said factory. In addition, the customers (factories buying products) of the guilt factory should also be held responsible for making purchases without checking validity of licences. Now a days, with ISO certification, every management needs to ensure proper licences and authorizations before purchasing any items. Of course, if the product is a finished item for purchase by public, then these public can't be held responsible as there is no way of checking the credentials before buying.

There is no information in the news papers about how many times the factory inspector inspected the plant in the last few years. If there were inspections, factory inspector is equally responsible for the incident.

When a proper coordination exists between all concerned agencies as listed above and others, I am sure the hands of factory department will be strengthened to ensure safe work place.