Are our safety audits improving paperwork over verifying effective safety systems?
Happy to share my first solo, non-PhD study which mapped 448 corrective actions from 65 health and safety audits, using the Hierarchy of Controls and Rasmussen’s Risk Management framework.
I found:
· ~86% addressed ‘soft’ controls, e.g. admin & PPE, leaving just ~14% for ‘hard’ fixes, e.g. elimination, substitution, isolation or engineering controls
· None of them targeted fixes above the project-level: “improvements at the site level stay at the site level”
· Hence, I argue that audit fixes are ‘superficially trapped’ at the same level that they are observed – particularly around local paperwork and visible conditions, rather than stronger risk control measures and upstream organisational influences
· Moreover, just 3.1% of all observations targeted the verification of field risk controls
Do audit corrective actions ‘need’ to focus on field risk controls? Is this a fair conclusion? Let me know your thoughts.
Check it out and please share. Shared under an open access licence.
PS. Check out my YouTube!
#safetyaudits #riskmanagement #criticalcontrols #safetyscience #safety #iso45001
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