So, you’re meeting the status quo and passing your safety inspections. That’s great, but it’s no reason to let your safety program stagnate. Why not aim a little higher?

While a no-accident policy is definitely a noble goal and achievable in some industries, it is important to set realistic yet demanding goals. OSHA’s Voluntary Protection Program (VPP) is a great way to start.

VPP essentially recognizes worksites that have gone above and beyond in their health and safety efforts by implementing top-of-the-line safety management systems. Sites awarded by the program are considered exemplary leaders in safety performance and are eligible to receive one of three rankings:

• Star: The highest level of recognition, the Star Program recognizes sites that have achieved injury and illness rates at or below their industry’s average, self-sufficiently control workplace hazards, and boast the most robust, comprehensive safety management programs.
• Merit: Merit sites are on the road to becoming Star-recognized, but need to boost health and safety performance to be considered excellent.
• Star Demonstration: This designation is reserved for worksites that address unique, often sector-specific health and safety concerns and issues.

Many employers might wonder why they ought to exceed basic health and safety requirements and seek recognition through the program. There are many reasons, all of which will contribute to any organization’s social and economic bottom lines:

• Fewer Accidents: On average VPP participants see at least 50 per cent fewer accidents on an annual basis and a Days Away Restricted or Transferred (DART) case rate of 52 per cent below the average for their industry.
• Increased Productivity and Efficiency: Fewer accidents mean less downtime and a more effective, efficient use of your human capital.
• Reduced Insurance Rates: As your company or worksite demonstrates superior safety performance and encounters fewer or no fatalities or accidents, annual insurance rates will plummet.
• Attract and Retain Talent: Not only will existing employee morale get a boost from your exemplary safety record, being VPP Star-recognized will help your company attract top industry talent who will be lured by your commitment to safety.
• Marketing and Brand Equity: With fewer or no accidents, injuries, fines and fatalities, VPP recognition can ultimately be leveraged with marketing campaigns to boost brand image and attract high-calibre customers.
  

Achieving VPP recognition is demanding, but completely realistic if a worksite has implemented a robust, streamlined software-based safety management system.

To learn more about VPP or join the program, contact OSHA’s Office of Partnerships and Recognition at (202) 693-2213 (or the VPP Manager at your OSHA Regional Office). Read all about VPP here.

As a leading vegetation management and emergency restoration service, ABC Tree works in one of the most dangerous industries in the U.S. When a storm hits, for example, and a fallen tree disrupts electrical utility service, ABC Tree is on the job.

Since the work is so dangerous, accidents are an unfortunate yet sometimes inevitable reality of the job. But by implementing Intelex software, ABC Tree has shown steady decreases of the incidence of accidents and safety violations and is on their way to a safer—and eventually accident-free—future.

Head over to our press room to learn how ABC Tree has actually mitigated the impact of fines associated with OSHA penalties, and how the company is working to make penalties a thing of the past.

In yesterday's weekly update EHS Today announced their list of the 50 most influential leaders in EHS.

The list is an interesting cross section of executives from government leaders to researchers and academics with a mini-bio of each of the appointees. Do you think anyone is missing from list? There is definitely a contingent of senior people with a wide breadth of expertise.

I was particularly struck by the impact that several of these leaders have made to the field and the interesting projects they are currently part of.

For a detailed description of the products that Intelex offers in EHS be sure to visit our product pages for Environment or Health & Safety. Or call us at 1-877-932-3747 for more information.

For the first time since it was created more than four decades ago, the legislation protecting America' workers is about to get a new set of teeth.

The Protecting America's Workers Act (PAWA), currently before Congress' Subcommittee on Workforce Protections, represents the single biggest expansion of workers' rights since the 1970 establishment of the Occupational Safety and Health Act, which has only seen minor amendments in the intervening years. Dr. David Michaels, Assistant Secretary of Labor for the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), spoke before the subcommittee last month in strong support of the passing of the proposed bill, HR 2067.

"The workplaces of 2010 are not those of 1970," he said during his March 16 address, underscoring the urgency of updating the legislation. "The law must change as our workplaces have."

The proposed bill's many changes to the original act include significantly increased civil penalties and prison sentences for violators, more protection for whistleblowers and coverage for government employees currently without protection. The reforms proposed within PAWA would throw a lot of old conventions out the window and significantly transform the existing regulatory framework. And, as Michaels cautioned, employers will have to adapt.

"Because OSHA can visit only a limited number of workplaces each year we need a stronger OSH Act to leverage our resources to encourage compliance by employers," he said. "We need to make employers who ignore real hazards to their workers' safety and health think again."

PAWA's many changes to the Occupational Health and Safety Act include the following:

More protection for whistleblowers: If an employee has a reasonable apprehension that performing a duty may result in injury or a serious impairment of the health of an employee, PAWA will ensure they are not discriminated against and will face no consequences, if their concerns are deemed warranted.

Expanded coverage: If enacted, PAWA would extend coverage to more than 10 million local, state and federal government employees not currently covered by the Occupational Health and Safety Act.

Criminal conduct: PAWA would make it easier for employers to be criminally charged in the event of a violation. Some of the provisions include the following:

• Whereas a misdemeanor represents the most severe criminal charge applicable to an employer, under PAWA, an employer could be charged with a felony offense.
• Employers who can be charged would include "any responsible corporate officer."
• Maximum prison sentences would expand from six months to 10 years for a first offense and from one year to 20 years for additional convictions.
• The threshold of conduct required to trigger criminal liability would be lowered.
• The burden of proof in a criminal case would be broadened from "willfully" to "knowingly", making it easier for employees to make a case.

Increased civil penalties: The current $70,000 maximum penalty for willful and repeated violations would nearly double to $120,000 under PAWA. Also, penalties for willful or repeated violations resulting in an employee's death would fall within a minimum of $50,000 and a maximum of $250,000.

All indications—including President Barack Obama's outspoken support for strengthened health and safety legislation—suggest the reforms proposed in PAWA will be implemented. It is incumbent on proactive employers to begin a review of how these changes will affect their current workplace safety and health management programs, a process rendered headache-free with Intelex's health and safety management software solutions.

For more information, find the act here or read Michaels' remarks to the Subcommittee on Workforce Protections here.

EHS Today Magazine’s 2009 National Safety Survey was recently conducted with nearly 1000 industry professionals taking part and providing some qualified insight on the topics of EHS programs, work environments, targeted injuries/illnesses, management support, job duties, OSHA performance and more. The results of the survey are discussed in a recent article entitled “National Safety Survey: Can We Still Afford To Be Safe?” penned by Laura Walter which was featured on EHS Today’s website. Walter outlines some of the trends that surfaced from the respondent’s answers and provides us with a look at the various views that were expressed on some of today’s popular EHS industry topics.

It is no surprise that an area receiving a particular amount of focus was the current economy and how it has reflected upon EHS programs and budgets. When respondents were asked about this topic, as Walter writes, “EHS professionals reported lower morale among employees, reduced or eliminated incentive programs, reduced travel opportunities, reduced training, layoffs, facility closures and fewer new equipment purchases. One respondent even claimed he had just lost his job and was preparing to file for unemployment.” EHS budget fluctuations were also reported with 10 percent of respondents indicating their budget was decreased more than 10 percent in 2009, 13 percent indicated a decrease of 1 to 10 percent, 47 percent reported their budget had remained the same, 11 percent reported an increase of 1 to 10 percent and a happy 4 percent reported a budget increase of more that 10 percent in 2009. Although some felt cuts to budgets to be threatening to their safety, several respondents indicated that their organizations had utilized layoffs as a means of eliminating inexperienced employees who commonly took risks and shortcuts which as a result improved their safety performance.

In one area of the survey, respondents were asked to rate President Obama’s approach so far to occupational health and safety. The responses to this particular question yielded a variety of opinions on the subject. With 16 percent rating Obama’s performance as good, 26 percent felt it was average, 13 percent rated it as fair, 15 percent felt is performance was poor and 27 percent indicated it was just too soon to tell. Another question dealt with OSHA (Occupational Safety and Health Administration, the main federal agency charged with the enforcement of safety and health legislation in the US), asking what occupational safety and health challenge would you most like to see OSHA address during the Obama administration? This question also yielded a mixed bag of opinions with respondents expressing that OSHA focus on a range of issues such as ergonomics, workplace aggression, updating antiquated standards, the nomination of an OSHA administrator and spending more energy investigating the circumstances of violations before issuing out fines. Overall the 2009 National Safety Survey is a valuable tool for gaining insight into the current EHS landscape from the perspective of those who work directly within it. Surveys such as this one are important as they help to further understand the current trends and help to project where the industry is headed.

Industry safety standards and regulations are constantly under review and analysis in an effort to continually improve upon them. The chemical sector is no exception, as governments worldwide are working to put the whole area of accident prevention in hazardous industries under greater regulatory control, the chemical sector is specifically increasing its emphasis on process safety. In a recent article from ICIS.com author Sean Milmo takes a look at some of the issues revolving around this movement.

Entitled "Chemical firms grapple with new approach to process safety data," Mr. Milmo's article first addresses the considerable pressure mounting towards the chemical industry to increase the scale of safety data reporting as a recent series of major accidents within the industry have resulted in a significant number of injuries and fatalities. These incidents have prompted both regulatory authorities and the general public to expect the chemical industry to step up preventative measures for these types of catastrophes.

So what is being done? In both Europe and North America regulatory bodies are taking steps to improve the safety reporting landscape and implement a process safety approach. As Mr. Milmo notes, "The European Commission is reviewing the 13-year-old Seveso II directive on the control of major accident hazards with the objective of making more effective obligatory safety management systems in plants, including those covering process safety. In the US, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) has been urged, particularly by the country's Chemical Safety Board (CSB) that investigates chemical accidents, to enforce existing legislation on process safety more effectively." Although both sides of the Atlantic are proactively seeking a common platform for chemical sector safety standards, there is still dispute from each party as to what process safety data should be monitored. The problematic issue has been the huge variety of data that can be categorized as being indicators. There are two types of indicators, lagging and lead, lagging indicators provide information on incidents after they have happened and lead indicators help to measure the effectiveness of procedures, operating disciplines and protections that work to prevent incidents, there are also near misses which are not serious but could lead to severe incidents. The choice between these indicators is causing much confusion among experts, as what some would classify as a lead indicator others would categorize as lagging.

Although there have been some disputes along the way, much progress has been made by both US and European organizations to establish a uniform model for the application of indicators. As Mr. Milmo explains, "A consensus has now emerged that the choice of lead indicators should be left to individual companies or even sites within companies because different lead indicators are required for different products and processes." Also, in late 2007, the Center for Chemical Process Safety (CCPS) in the US consulted with a variety of chemical and petroleum associations, regulatory bodies, trade unions and academics to create a list of process safety metrics which has gained support from North and South America as well as a few European countries. With the main priority to gain a consensus towards the metrics, the CCPS is leaving room for adjustments and continued improvements to their list. Although not perfect yet, the effort towards creating a global reporting culture is growing, which ultimately will create safer and more regulated conditions for all those working within the chemical sector across the globe.

Intelex Technologies has released its latest software innovation, the Intelex OpenPass API, a revolutionary application programming interface that will enable its users to sync and report data between multiple business management systems.

The Intelex OpenPass API functions as a conduit for seamlessly feeding data between multiple software programs. This means that Intelex’s environment, quality, and health & safety, and business management Software can now share data with pre-existing business software applications; thereby, saving time and resources while maintaining a degree of accuracy that’s difficult to achieve when data is transmitted manually.

The City of Calgary and St. Gobain are the first Intelex clients to take advantage of the OpenPass API.  The City of Calgary used our OpenPass API to import employee and location data from their pre-existing HR system into their Intelex System. They also used the OpenPass API to export employee injury data (i.e., incident number with date and time stamp) from Intelex’s Master Incidents Module into their HR program.

St. Gobain used the OpenPass API to import training courses, employee lists, and employee workgroup data from Lotus Notes into the Intelex System and Training Management Module. By using the OpenPass API St. Gobain was able to quickly populate their new Intelex System with historical data that will be a key factor in reporting accuracy and trending.

If you think that your organization could use the Intelex OpenPass API to import, export, and sync data between a pre-existing management program and your Intelex System, send an email to client.relations@intelex.com or call 416.599.6009 for more details.

Forbes.com has put together this list of the most dangerous jobs in America. The data was drawn from a report by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

1. Fishers and related workers (111.8 fatalities per 100,000)

2. Loggers (86.4 fatalities per 100,000)

3. Pilots and Flight Engineers (66.7 fatalities per 100,000)

4. Iron and Steel Workers (45.5 fatalities per 100,000)

5. Farmers and Ranchers (38.4 fatalities per 100,000)

6. Roofers (29.4 fatalities per 100,000)

7. Electrical Power Line Installers and Repairers (29.1 fatalities per 100,000)

8. Drivers (truckers and salespeople) (26.2 fatalities per 100,000)

9. Refuse and Recyclable Material Collectors (22.8 fatalities per 100,000)

10. Police Sheriffs and Patrol Officers (21.4 fatalities per 100,000)

Intelex is pleased to announce that we will be a platinum sponsor at NAEM's 16th Annual EHS Management Forum. The forum takes place October 22-24th at The Peabody Memphis in Memphis, Tennessee.

For those folks who are interested in learning more about streamlining safety management efforts across multiple sites, Intelex client's Tyco Flow Control North America will be presenting on "Safety – Best Practices and Emerging Issues."

Presenting on behalf of Tyco Flow Control North America is Environmental, Health & Safety Manager Keith Welch. In his current role, Keith has overall EHS responsibility and oversight for over 20 locations in Canada, the US, and Mexico.  Keith currently has his Associate Safety Professional designation and is working toward his CSP.  Keith was recently recognized by Tyco International for his outstanding EHS contributions during the company's annual EHS Conference.  In addition Keith has been responsible for leading the implementation of the Intelex software for over 30 Tyco Flow Control Americas facilities.