Industrial Safety and Security (Subjective Notes) - 3

Q.9 Accidents can be caused by unsafe acts and unsafe conditions. Discuss with managements involvement to reduce these.

Ans: - Unsafe conditions:

This is one of the biggest cause of accidents. Such causes are associated with defective plants, equipment, tool, materials, buildings etc. These can be termed “Technical causes”. They arise when there are:

· improper or inadequate safety guards on machines;

· when improper personal protection equipment is installed

· when mechanical r construction designs are defective and unsafe;

· when control devices, which have been installed to make the operation of machines safe and accident free are lacking or defective or

· when there is an absence of proper maintenance and supervision of these devices. These include:

o Improperly guarded equipment

o Defective equipment

o Hazardous arrangement or procedure in and or around machines or equipment

o Unsafe storage; congestion; overloading.

o Inadequate safety devices.

· Wrong and faulty lay out and bad location

· Improper illumination – glare, insufficient light

· Poor house keeping.

Unsafe acts:

These acts maybe the result of lack of knowledge or skill on the part of the employees certain bodily defects and wrong attitudes. They include:

· Operating without authority

· Failing to secure equipment or warning other employees of possible danger.

· Failing to use safe attire or personal protective equipment

· Throwing materials on the floor carelessly.

· Operating or working at unsafe speeds, either too fast or too slow.

· Making safety devices inoperative by removing, adjusting, disconnecting them.

· Using unsafe equipment or suing equipment unsafely.

· Using unsafe procedures in loading, placing, mixing, combining.

· Taking unsafe positions under suspended loads.

· Lifting improperly.

· Cleaning, adjusting, oiling, repairing, moving a dangerous equipment.

· Distracting, teasing, abusing, startling, quarrelling, daydreaming, horseplay.

Prevention of both unsafe & safe acts:

Prevention is better than cure. Logical considerations would lead to composing basic steps for preventive programmes. Each step of preventive programme shall have direct bearing on the reasons established through investigations. The preventive reasons can be divided into 3 main headings namely:

· Economic

· Humanitarian

· Legal

Preventive measures:

These will include action taken by the supervisor, by the manager, by others (like maintenance department, training officr, safety officer etc.) and in some cases by the top level management. The investigation report should clearly spell out the corrective actions required and the persons responsible for the same.

Some guidelines for making investigations useful by having discussions with the Management:

a) Investigations should be started as early as possible.

b) All physical evidence should be observed and recorded.

c) As many witnesses as possible should be examined. Each witness should be examined separately and patiently and efforts made to reconstruct the events. Investigation the site of accident, desirable.

d) As much information as possible on the machines and equipments and the man involved, should be collected.

e) Efforts should be made to identify all the unsafe acts and conditions that lead to the accident.

f) The investigator should look for indirect causes, specially in the following areas:

· Faulty design / layout / tools

· Poor maintenance standards

· Incorrect work methods

· Inadequate or vague instructions

· Errors on the part of supervision

· Specific training needs ignored

· Poor house-keeping

· Violations of rules / operating instructions or lack of instructions.

· Non-use of or improper use of safety equipment.

· Psychological factors

· Organisational factors responsible for above.

g) It never pays to overlook any suggestion / idea put forth.

h) Recommendations to prevent recurrence of the accident should be specific and clear. A time bound action plan should be prepared at the end.

i) The recommendations should be brought to the notice of all concerned in writing.

j) It will be good to discuss the findings in a meeting of concerned department heads and supervisors.

k) The records of all accidents and investigations should be kept in a clean orderly way for future reference.

Q.10. Accidents are costs which management need to pay attention to. Discuss.

Ans :- Accident Cost:

Importance of knowing costs:

Despite a favourable position of the safety department, it cannot afford to neglect the effect of its activities on company profits. When sales fall off or a company is under financial strain for any reason, management frequently thinks about eliminating or contracting some of its staff departments. Thus figures showing that the safety program is not a financial drain may be necessary for demonstrating why they should be continued when business slows down. Or they may be the only means of inducting management to embark on a serious program in the first place. Management must think first of the success and continued existence of the enterprise.

Management must seek efficient operation if it is to manage at all. Thus, it is not surprising that as early as 1944 R.B.Blake, senior safety engineer of the Division of Labour Statistics, U.S.Department of Labour stated “The main driving force behind the industrial safety movement is the fact that accidents are expensive. Substantial savings can be had by preventing them”. This opinion, which is widely held today, does not contradict our earlier statement that the first and highest purpose of safety work is humanitarian. It simply, indicates that for many companies reduction of cost has been the motive that has actually had the most effect in bringing about a reduction of injuries. On the other hand, Reinefort, in an unpublished doctoral dissertation, concluded that “safety program costs and work injury costs are trade offs.” It should be noted that the economic benefits of competent and serious hazards, the cost for an effective safety program can be far less that the consequences of safety inadequacies. The incidents involving the Challenger spacecraft , the Chernobyl nuclear plant, and Bhopal chemical plant are

recent notable examples. The use of cost data does not stop with the acceptance by management of the principles. Than to organized work is desirable. Someone has to make decisions as to how much money will be allocated to that work and how much emphasis is to be given to safety of operations in the instructions from higher levels of management to those on the operating level.

Costs (Types):

Accidents are enormously costly, cause loss directly or indirectly and the losses are both visible and invisible. The latter are immeasurable and cannot be valued in monetary terms. Whenever an industrial accident occurs, it gives rise to pain for the victim and his family and retards industrial productivity which, in turn, affects the economy of a country. It results in financial loss for the employee and the employer and large payments by the latter in the shape of compensation.

The various losses which a management suffers because of the time loss due to accidents are:

a) Direct costs, that is the wages of employees; six to ten times the wages because of the

loss of goods and services, compensation and the cost of medical aid; the cost incurred on training a new worker; loss due to waste of raw materials and loss of production and quality arising out of the inexperience and lack of skill of the new employee.

b) Indirect cost, which include the following:

i) The cost which the Government has to incur because it has to maintain a larger number of factory inspectors to check accidents; because it has to spend more on the employee’s health insurance and other social security benefits and because the cost of all these is recovered by imposing the higher taxes on the people;

ii) The cost of the employee of the time he has been without work because of his accident.

iii) The cost of the lost time because other employees stop work out of curiosity, out of sympathy with the injured employee, or because they have to assist the injured worker.

iv) The cost of time lost by a foreman, a supervisor or other executive while assisting the injured employee, investigating the cause of the accident arranging for his replacement, selecting and training a new employee preparing the accident report and attending hearings conducted by Government or other officials.

v) The cost incurred on the machine or tools that might have been damaged and / or the cost of the spoilage of material when the accident occurred,

The uninsured cost must be estimated. It is important that the method used be logically supportable.

vi) The loss of profit on the production which the injured employee would have been responsible for, including the loss increased because the machine on which he was working was idle;

vii) The cost incurred on account of the wages, paid to an employee during the period in which he was idle following this injury and even after his return to work, when his production would be worth much less than it was before he sustained the injury;

viii)The loss following the excitement among, or the weakened morale of the other employees following, the occurrence of the accident and the consequent lower productivity throughout the plant; and

ix)Overhead costs – expense incurred on light, heat, rent and such other items which, continue to be sued while the injured employee is a non-producer.

Q.11. Write short notes on :-

b) Notice of Accidents:

Authority- Section 88 of Factories Act:

A notice to such concerned authorities and in time be sent as per format in the event of:

a) Accident in a factory causes death or

b) Causes any bodily injury by reason of which the person injured is prevented from working for a period of 48 hours or more.

c) Authority referred to in case (a) is to make an enquiry within one month by the inspector.

d) State Govt. may make rules for regulating the procedure at enquiries under this section 88.

c) Accident causation models:

Behavioral model: (Motivation reward satisfaction model):

The employee mode safety performance of the employee is dependent upon his level of motivation and his ability to perform. Ability is a function of selection and of training. However, is considerably more complex, being depending on such things as the climate and style of the organization as he does it (influenced primarily by his boss, but also by upper management and staff safety), by his own personality by whether or not he is happy in the job he is in (is it any fun?) by the job motivational factory (for example, will it allow him to achieve any responsibility to it, can he get promoted from it?) by the peer group (the norms established and enforced) and by the Union.

Human factors model – the Ferri theory:

One theory of accident causation in this category comes from Dr.Russel Forrel, Professor of human factors at the University of Arizona. They theory states that accidents are the result of a casual chain (as in the multiple causation theory), one or more of the causes being human error. Behind all initiating incidents of accidents is human error.

Human error is in turn caused by one of three situation (1) overload which is the mismatch of a human’s capacity and the load to which is subjected in a motivation and arousal state; (2) incorrect response by the person in the situation which is due to a basic incompatibility to which he is subjected; and (3) an improper activity that he performs either because he did not know any better or because he deliberately took a risk since this is basically a human factors model greater emphasis is then placed on the first two causes of human error, overload and incompatibility.

The Peterson accident – incident causation model:

An adaptation of the Ferrel human factors model of causation is the Peterson model. This model differs from the Ferrel model in that it allows two possible causes for accidents much as the original Heinrichdomino theory did human error and / or system failure. Causes of accidents and / or incidents can be from either or both.

This model suggests that behind human error are there board categories; overload, traps, and decision to error. Overload approximates the Ferrel model very closely and is again defined as a mismatch of capacity with load in a state. Items under each concept of the job hazard situation, include four classes, motivational, arousal, attitudinal and biorhythmic.

The major difference, however, is in the third category, called “Decision to err”. This category suggests that employees often commit human error through conscious decision (or

unconscious decision). There are times, when workers will choose to perform a task unsafely because it simply is much more logical in their situation to perform it unsafely than it is to perform it safely.

This model suggests that many workers do perform unsafely simply because they perceive a low probability of an accident happening to them or because they perceive a low potential cost to them of the accident.

Q.12. Write note on safety officer.

Ans :- Safety Officer:

The safety person, whether called safety engineer, safety officer or safety director is merely management’s representative. The executive operating is responsible for the safety conduct of the organization. The safety specialist only develops the information needed as a staff member or advisor, which enables the line to exercise its authority effectively on behalf of safety. The safety function’s position, in an organization varies. The national Safety Council found that 44.8% of the safety specialists were responsible directly to top management. Another 19.8% reported to plant manager, while such designated authority appears advantageous to safety because it tends to involve prompt corrective action, it often cannot be implemented absolutely.

Qualifications and disqualification for being appointed as Safety Officer:

A) A person shall not be eligible for appointment as a Safety Officer unless he:

· Possesses a degree in any branch of engineering or technology and practical experience of working in any factory in a supervisory capacity for a period of not less than two years or experience of not less than five years in training education, consultancy or research in accident prevention in any industry: or

· Possesses:

o A degree in physics or chemistry or a diploma in any branch of engineering or technology and

o Practical experience f working in any factory in a supervisory capacity for a period of not less than five year and

o Possesses adequate knowledge of the local language of the State where the person is employed.

Duties of a Safety Officer:

A) The duties of a Safety Officer shall be to advise and assist the factory management in the fulfillment of its obligations, statutory or otherwise, concerning prevention of personal injuries and maintaining a safe working environment. These duties shall include the following namely:

· To advice the concerned departments in planning and organizing measures necessary for

the effective control of personal injuries.

· To advise on safety aspects in all job studies and to carry out detailed job safety studies of selected jobs.

· To check and evaluate the effectiveness of action taken or proposed to be taken to prevent personal injuries.

· To advise the purchasing and stores departments in ensuring high quality and availability of personal protective equipments.

· To advise on matters related to carrying out plant safety inspections.

· To carryout plant safety inspections in order to observe the physical conditions of work and the work practices and procedures followed by workers and to render advice on measures to be adopted for removing the unsafe physical conditions and preventing unsafe actions by workers.

· To render advice on matters related to reporting and investigation of industrial accidents and diseases.

· To investigate selected accidents.

· To investigate the dangerous occurrences reportable under the rule of the State Law and the cases of industrial diseases contracted by any of the workers employed in the factory reportable under rule of the said Act.

· To advise on the maintenance of such records as are necessary relating to accidents, dangerous occurrences and industrial diseases.

· To promote setting up of safety committees and act as advisor to such committees.

· To organize in association with the concerned departments, campaigns, competitions, contests and other activities which will develop and maintain the interest of the workers n establishing and maintaining safe conditions of work and procedures and

· To design and conduct either independently or in collaboration with the training department, suitable training and educational programmes for the prevention of personal injuries.

B) No Safety Officer shall be required or permitted to do any work, which is inconsistent with or detrimental to the performance of the duties.