This chapter discusses issues that can help an organization ensure it provides a safe, healthy and secure environment for users. It outlines the general nature of legislation and describes the characteristics of a well-managed HSSE regime. Even so, it should not be regarded as a guide to the legislation, as requirements vary from country to country.
Providing safe, healthy and secure facilities is more than a matter of compliance with legislation; it is a fundamental right for anyone. It is necessary to move away from a narrow definition of health and safety to include operational security and the environment to ensure that hazards and risks are identified and assessed.
The following points, among many others, are covered in the chapter.
- • The importance of health and safety in the workplace must be expanded to cover operational security for all users and that includes service personnel and visitors to the facility.
- The health, safety and security of personnel should be the concern of all organizations; the inability of a minority to act responsibly means that legislation is necessary to force minimum standards of behaviour.
- Increasingly, the broader concept of health, safety, security and the environment (HSSE) is being adopted by organizations as they focus on the well-being of people and the protection of property and the natural environment.
- Legislation varies from country to country in terms of its enactment but all share a common set of principles, the most fundamental of which is that it is unacceptable for someone to be injured in the course of their work; risk of injury cannot be dismissed as simply an occupational hazard.
- Compliance with health, safety and environmental legislation applies to everybody in the workplace and includes shared parts of a facility and the grounds in which it is located.
- A competent person must be appointed or act as a consultant to assist in complying with legislation, irrespective of whether services are provided in-house or outsourced.
- A policy statement must be produced and communicated to all stakeholders and should speak to the people and not be a mere check-the-box exercise.
- Zero accidents should be a goal for all organizations; it goes beyond trying harder to reduce or avoid accidents by redesigning working practices to remove exposure to hazards and risks that would otherwise harm personnel or property.
- ALARP–as low as reasonably practicable – is a principle for understanding the extent of efforts needed to avoid accidents, where the time, cost and effort of further risk reduction would be grossly disproportionate to the risk reduction achieved.
- Risk assessment must be a continual process if hazards and risks are to be identified and evaluated so that working practices are safe and without danger to users or damage to property; the process should be formalized in the risk management system.