Management of occupational health and safety (OHS) risks is a crucial component of any business. Numerous investigations have shown that work-related injuries and deaths occur disproportionately in small-to-medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and that this is clearly due to deficient management of OHS risks. The main goal of this work is to develop a base of indicators suitable for evaluating OHS risk management maturity in industrial SMEs. A preliminary model is then proposed for this evaluation, based on a small number of relevant indicators selected from a careful bibliographic review. The work begins with a critical review of the literature and analysis of known concepts, methods, tools and models of measurement of risk analysis maturity in order to extract relevant indicators. The most suitable indicators are then grouped to form the basis of a preliminary model for evaluating OHS risk management maturity in the SME setting. Our findings will help managers of SMEs make sound decisions in their quest to improve the OHS performance of their businesses.
30 April 2020 in International Journal of Safety and Security Engineering
Control of OHS risks in the mining industry has been attracting increasing attention in recent years. Because of their great diversity in a complex system, hazards can be difficult to identify and classify, especially when system components interact. Risk cannot be managed successfully without comprehensive investigation of all its aspects. A coherent and integrated classification for identifying and categorizing all hazards is currently lacking in mining. We propose an integrated system classification of OHS hazards in mining based on our review of 44 studies retrieved using PRISMA. Considering Canadian and international standards, regulations and conventions, new hazard categories are proposed and hazard prevention is discussed from 12 perspectives: physical, chemical, biological, ergonomic, accident and psychosocial risks, as well as policy, legislation, management, design, geography, and uncertainty, with reference to each of the four phases of a typical mine life cycle, the hazards were shown in a portrait. This paper provides suitable categories based on rational data for creating a portrait in order to OHS hazards prevention in life cycle activity in mine.
Although risk management tools are put to good use in many industrial sectors, some large projects have been met with numerous problems due to failure to take occupational health and safety (OHS) into consideration. In spite of the high level of risk and uncertainty associated with many industrial projects, the number of studies of methods for managing all known risks systematically remains small. Under effervescent economic conditions, industries must meet several challenges associated with frequent project start-ups. In highly complex and uncertain environments, rigorous management of risk remains indispensable for avoiding threats to the success of projects. Many businesses seek continually to create and improve integrated approaches to risk management. This article puts into perspective the complexity of the challenge of integrating OHS into industrial project risk management. A conceptual and methodological approach is proposed to guide future research focused on meeting this challenge. The approach is based on applying multi-disciplinary research modes to a complex industrial context in order to identify all scenarios likely to contain threats to humans or the environment. A case study is used to illustrate the potential of the proposed approach for application and its contribution to meeting the challenge of taking OHS into consideration. On-site researchers were able to develop a new approach that helped two mining companies in Quebec (Canada) to achieve successful integration of OHS into expansion projects.
24 August 2020 in Environment, Development and Sustainability