Safe Systems of Work

Safe systems of work (SSOW) is a procedure to eliminate risks and hazards involved in an operation. It involves taking into consideration all personnel, articles and substances and calculating the risks involved so that proper measures can be taken to eliminate or reduce the risks and eliminate hazards. The first priority of SSOW is to eliminate the risk(s). If this can't be done, then the next thing to do is to try reducing them.

Safety signs are there to improve safety communications. Their function is to remind, warn, help and alert people of risk(s), hazard(s) and safety procedures.

So, despite safety icons being a valuable tool of communication, they should not be used to replace safe systems of work.

For example, in the event of a fire, personnel should already be familiar with the procedures and the evacuation route where the green exit sign is only to guide and help people place the safe location. The safety sign won’t be visible to everyone until approaching the exit, and by itself, the sign might not be explanatory enough. Some signs, like the exit sign, are recognized by even the members of the public without training, but the safety procedures around evacuation vary from one workplace to another.

Another good example is working at height. Falls have been on the top of OSHA’s list of most reported incidents for several years now, thus there’s a strong need to improve safety procedures to reduce the biggest cause of workplace injuries. Again, adding safety signs to warn about the risks won’t be enough to decrease these incidents. Without proper controls and equipment in place, the risks cannot be eliminated. Safety signs should be added to reinforce safety, and to instruct and remind workers of required PPE, for example.

The HSE has put together a page to help organizations prepare for working at height.

Standardizing safety signs

Although organizations shouldn’t merely rely on safety signs, they do reflect on organizations’ safety culture and are an important part of workplace safety.

Safety signs stand out from the environment and are internationally recognized. There’s space for improving their use, however. According to Rob Long, the problem with safety icons is that they’re overly focused on objects. I see that with the workforce more mobile than ever, there’s an even stronger need to regulate the use and appearance of safety icons.

Since globalisation and the EU has increased migration between countries, we’re in need for international legislation. A lack of standardization in visual safety communication leads to confusion and increases the risk of incidents.

European standard

In 2013, ISO 7010 became a European Norm meaning that all European countries have had to adopt the standard. The safety icons standardized by ISO 7010 don’t include any written language which makes them readable for anyone, despite their native language, level of literacy and age. In the UK, most of the BS 5499 standards have also been superseded by BS ISO EN 7010, but it’s the Health and Safety Signs and Regulations of 1996 (by HSE) that enforce the use of health and safety signage.

USA

In the USA, safety sign standards are issued by OSHA. In 2013, OSHA issued a rule that incorporates the 2011 ANSI Z535 safety sign and tag standards into its regulations. The regulation utilizes globally communicative graphical symbols and ANSI format to better attract people’s attention.

The aim of this rule is to create a consistent signage system that would improve national hazard recognition and visual safety communication, and in this way reduce workplace incidents, injuries and fatalities.

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Life-Saving Rules in the Oil and Gas Industry

The oil and gas industry has also noticed the impact standardized safety icons can have. In 2010, as a result of reviewing 1,484 fatal incidents and 1,173 high potential events for trends related to the cause and the use of protective barriers, the International Association of Oil & Gas Producers (IOGP) created the IOGP Life-Saving Rules. These rules consist of a set of eight core rules and ten additional rules that provide simple, clear icons with instructions on the actions workers can take to protect themselves. The guidance is provided in everyday language so that it’s easy to understand.

Reports from the IOGP demonstrate how the use of these icons has reduced the number of fatalities in the industry. According to data from 45 IOGP member companies, 87% of the fatal incidents of 2017 would not have taken place if the Life-Saving Rules had been followed.

The importance of harmonizing visual safety communication

As recognized by the USA, Europe and the oil and gas industry, harmonizing and standardizing the use of safety signage is an important factor in improving visual safety communication.

Communicating hazards in a systematic way has also been a concern within the chemicals industry. The labels on chemicals are different between regions, and language barriers together with local rules for classification have made it difficult for workers to understand foreign hazard descriptions.

The UN created GHS (Globally Harmonized System) to classify and communicate the hazardous properties of industrial and consumer chemicals through labels and safety data sheets. The aim of GHS is to ensure that information on hazardous properties is understood across countries and that they’re labelled and classified in a consistent manner.

GHS is a non-legally binding international agreement, which means that countries/trading blocks must create local legislation to implement the GHS.

Hence, unlike OSHA, agencies such as ANSI and ISO don’t have regulatory authority over the use of these standards, which is why enforcement from local regulatory bodies is required. For example, ISO 7010 standard provides the guidelines, but local regulations must enforce these for organizations to follow them.

Safety icons are an integral part of workplace safety, but to get the most value out of them, both organizations and local authorities have the responsibility to standardize their use.

Safety icons won’t improve safety unless their meaning is understood by everyone visiting the site, or if they’re being used to replace other safety measures such as safe systems of work.

When proper controls are in place, safety signs carry their role as the first point of contact with health and safety rules, which can be improved by harmonizing their design and layout in an international scale.