Safety Management Systems
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A safety management system (SMS) is designed to manage safety risk in the
workplace A workplace is a location where someone Work (human activity), works, for their employer or themselves, a place of employment. Such a place can range from a Small office/home office, home office to a large office building or factory. For Indust ...
, occupational safety being defined as the reduction of risk to a level that is as low as is reasonably practicable or
ALARP ALARP ("as low as reasonably practicable"), or ALARA ("as low as reasonably achievable"), is a principle in the regulation and management of safety-critical and safety-involved systems. The principle is that the residual risk shall be reduced as f ...
to prevent people getting hurt.


Description

A SMS provides a systematic way to continuously identify and monitor
hazard A hazard is a potential source of harm Harm is a moral and legal concept. Bernard Gert construes harm as any of the following: * pain * death * disability * mortality * loss of abil ity or freedom * loss of pleasure. Joel Feinberg giv ...
s and control
risk In simple terms, risk is the possibility of something bad happening. Risk involves uncertainty about the effects/implications of an activity with respect to something that humans value (such as health, well-being, wealth, property or the environme ...
s while maintaining assurance that these risk controls are effective. SMS can be defined as:
...a businesslike approach to safety. It is a systematic, explicit and comprehensive process for managing safety risks. As with all management systems, a safety management system provides for goal setting, planning, and measuring performance. A safety management system is woven into the fabric of an organization. It becomes part of the culture, the way people do their jobs.
There are three imperatives for adopting a safety management system for a business – these are ethical, legal and financial. There is an implied moral obligation placed upon an employer to ensure that work activities and the place of work are safe; there are legislative requirements defined in every jurisdiction on how this is to be achieved and there is a substantial body of evidence which shows that effective safety management can reduce the financial exposure and damage to the reputation of an organisation by reducing accidents.
To address these three important elements, an effective SMS should:
* Define how the organisation is set up to manage risk. * Identify workplace risk and implement suitable controls. * Implement effective communications across all levels of the organisation. * Implement a process to identify and correct non-conformity and non-compliance issues. * Implement a continual improvement process. The foundation to an effective safety management system is that of effective risk management. The defined process within an organisation for the identification, assessment, evaluation and control (or risk treatment) of risk will be key, must be carefully considered and then documented within the safety management system. As with safety management, there are a number of risk management models that can be used depending on the risk profile of an organisation, but the internationally recognised standard
ISO 31000 ISO 31000 is a family of standards relating to risk management codified by the International Organization for Standardization. ISO 31000:2018 provides principles and generic guidelines on managing risks that could be negative faced by organizatio ...
- ''Risk management – Guidelines'' is a common starting point. Interestingly, there is no reference to safety within the standard.


Historical context

Safety management evolved as a counterweight to the exploitation of workers in industry through the 19th and 20th centuries. As the industrial revolution opened up substantial commercial opportunities in Western societies, the financial imperative of business owners and industrialists lead to the use of an exploited, unskilled and uneducated workforce including child labour and rural migrant workers, often in working conditions where injury and death were day to day occurrences. It became the remit of legislators with a social conscience to understand that governments had a moral and legal responsibility to protect workers using general and industry specific safety legislation. In the UK, the early 19th century
Factory Acts The Factory Acts were a series of acts passed by the Parliament of the United Kingdom to regulate the conditions of industrial employment. The early Acts concentrated on regulating the hours of work and moral welfare of young children employed ...
were a significant development for gradually improving occupational safety through the decades, in fact the last iteration was made in 1961. This evolving environment was also the driving force behind the formation of the
trade union A trade union (labor union in American English), often simply referred to as a union, is an organization of workers intent on "maintaining or improving the conditions of their employment", ch. I such as attaining better wages and benefits ( ...
or labour union movements and worker representation in the early 19th century across Europe and America which developed through the decades into representation in wage and working condition negotiations, but also in protecting the health, safety and welfare of workers. One clear example of how unsafe and dangerous work conditions had become during the industrial revolution can be seen in this extract relating to an early 20th century mining disaster in
West Virginia West Virginia is a state in the Appalachian, Mid-Atlantic and Southeastern regions of the United States.The Census Bureau and the Association of American Geographers classify West Virginia as part of the Southern United States while the Bur ...
, USA.
As the 19th century closed out and the 20th century began, West Virginia had become a more dangerous place to mine than most. West Virginia fell far behind other major coal-producing states in regulating mining conditions. Between 1890 and 1912, West Virginia had a higher mine death rate than any other state. West Virginia was the site of numerous deadly coal mining accidents, including the nation's worst coal disaster. On December 6, 1907, an explosion at a mine owned by the Fairmont Coal Company in Monongah, Marion County, killed 361. One historian has suggested that during World War I, a U.S. soldier had a better statistical chance of surviving in battle than did a West Virginian working in the coal mines. The drivers that were to positively influence mine safety as the 20th century progressed included; improvements in mining legislation with regulatory oversight and in occupational health and safety legislation, involvement by trade unions to improve workers’ rights and working conditions, developments in mining technologies and a more general acceptance in wider society that such high levels of fatalities were no longer acceptable.''

As research into occupational medicine improved, it had become possible to start to identify industrial diseases and illnesses caused by exposure to industry specific hazards such as coal dust in mining (miners black lung or
Coalworker's pneumoconiosis Coal workers' pneumoconiosis (CWP), also known as black lung disease or black lung, is an occupational type of pneumoconiosis caused by long-term exposure to coal dust. It is common in coal miners and others who work with coal. It is similar to b ...
),
asbestos Asbestos () is a naturally occurring fibrous silicate mineral. There are six types, all of which are composed of long and thin fibrous crystals, each fibre being composed of many microscopic "fibrils" that can be released into the atmosphere b ...
in construction (
asbestosis Asbestosis is long-term inflammation and pulmonary fibrosis, scarring of the human lung, lungs due to asbestos, asbestos fibers. Symptoms may include shortness of breath, cough, wheezing, and chest pain, chest tightness. Complications may include ...
and
mesothelioma Mesothelioma is a type of cancer that develops from the thin layer of tissue that covers many of the internal organs (known as the mesothelium). The most common area affected is the lining of the lungs and chest wall. Less commonly the lining ...
), exposure to physical agents such as
occupational noise Occupational noise is the amount of acoustic energy received by an employee's auditory system when they are working in the industry. Occupational noise, or industrial noise, is often a term used in occupational safety and health, as sustained expos ...
from industrial machinery (hearing loss,
tinnitus Tinnitus is the perception of sound when no corresponding external sound is present. Nearly everyone experiences a faint "normal tinnitus" in a completely quiet room; but it is of concern only if it is bothersome, interferes with normal hearin ...
or deafness) and vibration hazards from tools and equipment (hand-arm vibration syndrome and
vibration white finger Vibration white finger (VWF), also known as hand-arm vibration syndrome (HAVS) or dead finger, is a secondary form of Raynaud's syndrome, an industrial injury triggered by continuous use of vibrating hand-held machinery. Use of the term ''vibration ...
). These disabling and often fatal hazard vectors could then be targeted by legislation to reduce worker exposure to these dangerous substances and activities. As more industry specific and general safety, health and welfare related legislation started to be introduced, it became necessary for employers to have a framework within which these safety regulations could be understood, managed and the legal requirements implemented. This was necessary, not just to comply with regulations but to also avoid fines and legal costs for non-compliance, increased insurance and workers compensation costs due to accidents and especially in the U.S. increasingly expensive criminal and civil liability lawsuits for death and injury caused at work.


Basic safety management components


International Labour Organization SMS model

The ILO guidance document is one of the most basic and adaptable models for organisations to utilise when developing a safety management system. In the ILO guidance document, the basic safety management components are:
# Policy – Establish within
policy Policy is a deliberate system of guidelines to guide decisions and achieve rational outcomes. A policy is a statement of intent and is implemented as a procedure or protocol. Policies are generally adopted by a governance body within an organ ...
statements the requirements for sufficient resources; define top management commitment and state occupational safety and health (OSH) targets. # Organizing – How is the organization structured; how is responsibility and accountability defined; how does the organisation communicate internally and externally; what documentation is required and how is training and competency defined. # Planning and Implementation – How does the organisation plan for, develop and implement its approach to risk management; how are hazards identified and risk effectively managed; what goals and objectives are set to drive OHS performance and measure progress; what arrangements are made for contingency and emergency situations. # Evaluation – How is OSH performance measured and assessed; what is the processes for the reporting and investigation of accidents and incidents; what internal and external audit processes are in place to review and verify the system. # Action for Improvement – How are
corrective and preventive action Corrective and preventive action (CAPA or simply corrective action) consists of improvements to an organization's processes taken to eliminate causes of non-conformities or other undesirable situations. It is usually a set of actions, laws or regu ...
created, managed and closed out; what processes are in place to ensure the continual improvement process.
Although other safety management models may use different terminology, the basic components and workflow for safety management systems will be the same. The desired outcome is an effective Plan, Do, Check, Act (
PDCA PDCA (plan–do–check–act or plan–do–check–adjust) is an iterative design and management method used in business for the control and continual improvement of processes and products. It is also known as the Shewhart cycle, or the control ...
) process where the goal is that of continual and measurable improvement.


Regulatory perspective


Implications

A SMS is intended to act as a
business administration Business administration, also known as business management, is the administration of a commercial enterprise. It includes all aspects of overseeing and supervising the business operations of an organization. From the point of view of management ...
structure for an organization to effectively meet its legal obligations under applicable
occupational safety and health Occupational safety and health (OSH), also commonly referred to as occupational health and safety (OHS), occupational health, or occupational safety, is a multidisciplinary field concerned with the safety, health, and welfare of people at wor ...
laws. The scope of the organization's operations and therefore its risk profile will determine how the SMS is structured and what resources are required to manage occupational health and safety risk effectively. Some organizations may also have to dovetail other management system functions, such as process safety,
environmental resource management Environmental resource management is the management of the interaction and impact of human societies on the environment. It is not, as the phrase might suggest, the management of the environment itself. Environmental resources management aim ...
or
quality management Quality management ensures that an organization, product or service consistently functions well. It has four main components: quality planning, quality assurance, quality control and quality improvement. Quality management is focused not only ...
together with safety management to meet both regulatory requirements, industry sector requirements and an organizations own internal and discretionary standard requirements. Safety management should be considered as a part of the overall business management system of an organization and not an add-on to it. Increasingly, management standards across a range of business functions such as environment, quality and safety are now being designed so that these traditionally disparate elements can be integrated and managed within a single business management system and not as separate and stand-alone functions. Due to the close association between health and safety, safety management systems (SMS) are also increasingly known as occupational health and safety management systems (OHSMS); these two terms can to the greater extent can be used interchangeably. An SMS is only as good as its implementation – effective safety management means that organisations need to ensure they are looking at all the risks within the organization as a single system, rather than having multiple, competing, ‘Safety Management Silos.’ If safety is not seen holistically, it can interfere with the prioritization of improvements or even result in safety issues being missed. For example, after an explosion in March 2005 at BP's
Texas City Refinery (BP) Texas (, ; Spanish: ''Texas'', ''Tejas'') is a state in the South Central region of the United States. At 268,596 square miles (695,662 km2), and with more than 29.1 million residents in 2020, it is the second-largest U.S. state by bo ...
the investigation concluded that the company had put too much emphasis on personal safety thus ignoring the safety of their processes. The antidote to such silo thinking is the proper evaluation of all risks, a key aspect of an effective SMS.


Development of safety management standards


Industry sector standards

Over time, particular safety management models can become a preferred standard within an industry sector which is an approach often driven by industry representative bodies or trade associations. In industries where public safety is a prime consideration or where organisations operate in a high risk industry sector, specific regulations may be introduced which detail requirements that fit the industry risk profile, such as the OSHA requirement for a process safety management system. Industry specific safety management include: * The
International Association of Oil & Gas Producers The International Association of Oil & Gas Producers (IOGP) is the petroleum industry's global forum in which members identify and share best practices to achieve improvements in health, safety, the environment, security, social responsibility, eng ...
(IOGP) standard Operating Management System (OMS) for the oil and gas industry, * The
International Civil Aviation Organization The International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO, ) is a specialized agency of the United Nations that coordinates the principles and techniques of international air navigation, and fosters the planning and development of international sc ...
has recommended that all aviation authorities implement SMS regulatory structures. * Federal Aviation Authority - Safety Management System (SMS) for Airports - Guidance, Tools, & Related Information * The
European Aviation Safety Agency The European Union Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) is an agency of the European Union (EU) with responsibility for civil aviation safety. It carries out certification, regulation and standardisation and also performs investigation and monitorin ...
(EASA) began the process of implementing Safety Management System (SMS) regulations by issuing Terms of Reference (TOR) on July 18, 2011. Regulatory requirements for a safety management system include: * The
International Maritime Organization The International Maritime Organization (IMO, French: ''Organisation maritime internationale'') is a specialised agency of the United Nations responsible for regulating shipping. The IMO was established following agreement at a UN conference ...
(IMO) adopted the ISM Code in 2002 to provide an international standard for the safe management and operation of ships and for pollution prevention. *
Transport Canada Transport Canada (french: Transports Canada) is the department within the Government of Canada responsible for developing regulations, policies and services of road, rail, marine and air transportation in Canada. It is part of the Transportati ...
’s Rail Safety Directorate incorporated SMS into the rail industry in 2001. The Rail Safety Management System requirements are set out in the ''Railway Safety Management System Regulations''. *
Occupational Safety and Health Administration The Occupational Safety and Health Administration'' (OSHA ) is a large regulatory agency of the United States Department of Labor that originally had federal visitorial powers to inspect and examine workplaces. Congress established the agenc ...
(OSHA) - The Process Safety Management of Highly Hazardous Chemicals standard (29 CFR 1910.119) Independent safety management standards include: * The American National Standards Institute and the American Society of Safety Professionals ANSI/ASSP Z10.0 standard helps to establish OSH management systems to improve employee safety, reduce workplace risks and create better working conditions. It is one of the most comprehensive systems-based standards for improving OSH performance and provides an architecture that each organization can customize to their individual needs. * The
International Organization for Standardization The International Organization for Standardization (ISO ) is an international standard development organization composed of representatives from the national standards organizations of member countries. Membership requirements are given in Ar ...
(ISO)
ISO 45001 ISO 45001 is an ISO standard for management systems of occupational health and safety (OHS), published in March 2018. The goal of ISO 45001 is the reduction of occupational injuries and diseases, including promoting and protecting physical and ...
:2018 - ''Occupational health and safety management systems'' specifies requirements for an occupational health and safety (OH&S) management system, and gives guidance for its use, to enable organizations to provide safe and healthy workplaces by preventing work-related injury and ill health, as well as by proactively improving its OH&S performance.


National and international standards

Many countries have developed national safety management models that have become adopted by organisations across a wide range of industries. National standards draw on experience and knowledge from a wide variety of organisations and individuals and can provide a uniform and consistent framework in which to work. In addition, such standards can be externally accessed and certified, which for many organisations is a very desirable goal. These standards have a number of benefits: * When widely used, they provide for a consistent approach to managing safety across a wide range of industries. * When implemented, they result in improvements in safety performance, productivity and employee morale. * Current and future legislation can be easily incorporated into the safety management system which promotes compliance. * As new systems develop, it is generally easier to migrate to a new system when an established system is already in place. * For certified systems, certification implies effective conformance to the standard. * Many clients and customers see certification against a safety management system as an added value proposition. The Occupational Health and Safety Assessment Series, commonly known as OHSAS 18001 series standard from 1999 was an attempt to consolidate and establish a definitive certifiable standard internationally, taking lessons and best practice from many national standards. It was widely adopted with a revision undertaken in 2007. The OHSAS Project Group was independent of the
International Organization for Standardization The International Organization for Standardization (ISO ) is an international standard development organization composed of representatives from the national standards organizations of member countries. Membership requirements are given in Ar ...
(ISO). OHSAS 18001:2007 was withdrawn and replaced by the ISO standard
ISO 45001 ISO 45001 is an ISO standard for management systems of occupational health and safety (OHS), published in March 2018. The goal of ISO 45001 is the reduction of occupational injuries and diseases, including promoting and protecting physical and ...
:2018 ''Occupational health and safety management systems — Requirements with guidance for use''
One significant development that
ISO 45001 ISO 45001 is an ISO standard for management systems of occupational health and safety (OHS), published in March 2018. The goal of ISO 45001 is the reduction of occupational injuries and diseases, including promoting and protecting physical and ...
has introduced is compatibility with the ISO 14001 environmental management and the
ISO 9001 The ISO 9000 family is a set of five quality management systems (QMS) standards that help organizations ensure they meet customer and other stakeholder needs within statutory and regulatory requirements related to a product or service. ISO 90 ...
quality management standards.


See also

*
ISO 45001 ISO 45001 is an ISO standard for management systems of occupational health and safety (OHS), published in March 2018. The goal of ISO 45001 is the reduction of occupational injuries and diseases, including promoting and protecting physical and ...
*
International Organization for Standardization The International Organization for Standardization (ISO ) is an international standard development organization composed of representatives from the national standards organizations of member countries. Membership requirements are given in Ar ...
* OHSAS 18001 *
ALARP ALARP ("as low as reasonably practicable"), or ALARA ("as low as reasonably achievable"), is a principle in the regulation and management of safety-critical and safety-involved systems. The principle is that the residual risk shall be reduced as f ...
*
PDCA PDCA (plan–do–check–act or plan–do–check–adjust) is an iterative design and management method used in business for the control and continual improvement of processes and products. It is also known as the Shewhart cycle, or the control ...
*
Corrective and preventive action Corrective and preventive action (CAPA or simply corrective action) consists of improvements to an organization's processes taken to eliminate causes of non-conformities or other undesirable situations. It is usually a set of actions, laws or regu ...
*
International Labour Organization The International Labour Organization (ILO) is a United Nations agency whose mandate is to advance social and economic justice by setting international labour standards. Founded in October 1919 under the League of Nations, it is the first and o ...
*
Trade union A trade union (labor union in American English), often simply referred to as a union, is an organization of workers intent on "maintaining or improving the conditions of their employment", ch. I such as attaining better wages and benefits ( ...
* Process safety *
Occupational safety and health Occupational safety and health (OSH), also commonly referred to as occupational health and safety (OHS), occupational health, or occupational safety, is a multidisciplinary field concerned with the safety, health, and welfare of people at wor ...
*
Factory Acts The Factory Acts were a series of acts passed by the Parliament of the United Kingdom to regulate the conditions of industrial employment. The early Acts concentrated on regulating the hours of work and moral welfare of young children employed ...


References

{{Reflist Safety