HSE Roles within Management and Employees



HSE Roles within Management and Employees

Health, Safety, Environment management requires a high level of commitment from the top level and the lower level of the organization. As in other management system, leadership is important driving force in safety management to provide a sense of organizational commitment and direction to every levels of performance. However a good leadership does not mean a lot without active participation from the lower level or employees in committing to the management. These two parties and how they connect with each other are keys of an effective management system.

An effective way to gain and maintain high levels of commitment is to define and establish specific HSE roles and responsibilities throughout the organization’s structure. Operational controls are designed to manage HSE aspects, risks and obligations but controls are only as good as the individual efforts to implement and maintain those controls. Establishing clear roles and responsibility for the management system and resulting controls will help the organization implement its management system, sustain control over its HSE aspects and drive commitment throughout the workforce. This standard will help organizations implement and maintain an effective HSE management system by establishing clear lines of responsibility and accountability[1].

In general, safety roles and responsibility in the management of a company or organizational structure are as follows[2]:

o Participate in the formulation of safety policy.

o Ensure that safety systems are created, maintained and adapted.

o Ensure compliance with the regulatory requirements.

o Review plants and procedures.

o Identify, assess and monitor hazards.

o Educate and train in safety.

o Assist communication and promote feedback in safety matters.

o Contribute to technical developments in safety

But, as different company or organization has different safety goals and management culture, safety management design should always consider both the culture of the organization and the critically issue being managed, in order to find suitable methods to achieve safety targets.

The safety management approach should be consistent with the system used for managing other functions, it should be integrated with the operating management not segregated. Typical management has several elements such as policy, organization, planning, implementing and controlling. System safety may contribute specific features and characteristic on each of these management elements as shown in Table 1.

Table 1. Features and characteristics of a management system for process safety[3]

|Planning |

|Explicit goals and objectives |

|Well-defined scope |

|Clear-cut desired outputs |

|Consideration of alternative achievement mechanisms |

|Well-defined inputs and resource requirement |

|Identification of needed tools and training |

| |

|Organizing |

|Strong sponsorship |

|Clear lines or authority |

|Explicit assignments of roles and responsibilities |

|Formal procedures |

|Internal coordination and communication |

| |

|Implementing |

|Detailed work plans |

|Specific milestones for accomplishments |

|Initiating mechanisms |

| |

|Controlling |

|Performance standards and measurement methods |

|Checks and balances |

|Performance measurement and reporting |

|Internal reviews |

|Variance products |

|Audits mechanisms |

|Corrective action mechanisms |

|Procedure renewal and reauthorization |

Priority is another significant issue in designing an effective safety management. Within area of safety, not all elements are equally important, and their relative importance will vary from company to company, plant to plant, and process unit to process unit. For example, an extensive, rigorous system for triggering and reviewing changes to process operating parameters may be appropriate where energy-releasing polymerization reactions are performed. In comparison, simple blending of no-reactive material system may need less sophisticated safety measure.

Safety system management organization[4]

System safety management in a company must be free to inquire into all areas of design, operation, and maintenance. The system safety function must be positioned so that priority in obtaining information directly from all available sources is assured. Safety engineers must have direct and ease access to data and design sources to ensure that required information is received promptly.

The position of system safety manager in a company management should be placed on immediate staff to ensure that system safety engineering targets is applied on functions such as operational support and design engineering. In order to perform at best, system safety group is kept independent of other supporting disciplines such as reliability and maintainability. The placement of safety functions in an organization should also be established on many levels so safety is evaluated by several activities of the company.

In large company, it is evident that system safety in the corporate level is necessity. Corporate influence on system safety is important to have a consistent application of safety in design and proper review before the system or product enters the operational stage. A major factor of establishing a safety system program in an organization is the cost of developing and practicing the program. Since the system safety program is directed at a tailored program that only select the task that are required for application, cost control is mandated by the program structure. A rule of thumb is that system safety program will cost between 2%-5% of the total program cost when they have safety requirements for design and delivery of reports to the customer[5].

Management Interface Requirements

Safety management requires periodical check for design standards that are applied on the engineering tasks of the organization. Safety requirements must be certified for every activities of the system or product. Sometimes, safety programs needed to be tailored made. In cases where new system or product has different specifications, nevertheless safety program for these cases must be individually certified.

An important aspect in performing effective system safety program is the continual check on safety test, standards, their applicability, timeliness, and value for the system or product[6]. Transmitting data on safety –related defects from quality assurance to system safety division is part of the management interface requirement. Safety is concerned with system interactions, before and after failures, under both normal and abnormal conditions, as well as human error[7]. Therefore, safety normally needs to work closely with reliability and uses reliability input such as failure modes or failure rates for process hazard analysis.

System safety is concerned with the total system or product and its potential hazardous characteristics. Therefore, it is also necessary to ensure that the safety management interacts with contractors: (1) to assure proper requirements are placed in supplier’s contracts and legal counsel, (2) to evaluate risks involved with the product, (3) to evaluate industrial knowledge of environmental safety problem affecting the worker and interacts with manufacturing to ensure that all potential problems are identified and controlled[8].

The top executive holds a vital role in the system safety program in controlling hazards because it may back up the authority of system safety division. The system safety division must have the authority to influence decision making with the analyzed data and recommendations. The lines of authority that are given to the responsible system safety manager will only be strong as the backing from the top level management.

Qualification of safety personnel with specific education experience, certification and training should be identified in the company organization documents. A common deficiency has been the use of personnel from other departments or from product assurance to man the safety effort. In many cases, this has involved industrial hygiene, reliability or quality assurance personnel taking in the system safety responsibility as an additional duty[9].

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[1] Guidelines for Technical Management of Chemical Process Safety, Center for Chemical Process Safety (CCPS), American Institute of Chemical Engineers, 1989.

[2] Lee’s Loss Prevention in The Process Industries Vol.1, Vol.2 and Vol.3 Hazard Identification, Assessment and Control 3rd Edition, Elsevier, 2004.

[3] Idem as 1

[4] Roland, Harold E. Moriarty, Brian, System safety engineering and management 2nd edition, John Wiley & Sons,1990.

[5] Idem as 4

[6] Idem as 4

[7] Idem as 4

[8] Idem as 4

[9] Idem as 4

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