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INDUSTRIAL SAFETY AND HEALTH MANAGEMENT The Advantages and Disadvantages of Forming Committees to Identify Hazards Special safety committees have become an integral part of industrial safety and health management. These committees or special units may effectively identify hazards and the likelihood of their occurrence. Safety committees usually detect problems and potential hazards, recommend controls, develop and manage policy for the organization, and review safety performance. Of course, committees, just like any managerial unit, have some advantages and disadvantages. The biggest and the main advantage of a committee is that it assures an expedient means of a large number of staff, information, and ideas exchange. Thus, a committee means taking a joint decision. Moreover, if a committee consists of supervisors responsible for different functions in the department and representing different sections of the department, it helps to assure that all aspects are taken into account before final decision. For example, inspectors of repair and maintenance work always consider that an area does not have any combustibles or sources of heat, safety supervisors usually test alarm systems and sensors, etc. Thus, a committee makes it possible to bring together a larger range of interests, expertise and ideas together, which leads to effective suggestions for resolution of hazards (Hammer & Price, 2001). However, committees often cause considerable delays in decision making and in its implementation. Also, they are usually associated with significant expenditure of total manpower. In addition, very often, an absence of a supreme authority in the committee results in irresponsibility for the outcomes and making decisions, which represent compromise between discordant opinions rather than an adequate balance of contradictory requirements. On the other hand, significantly more powerful committee members may impose their decision on others; therefore, the committee loses its merit of ensuring a wide range of experts views (Hammer & Price, 2001).

INDUSTRIAL SAFETY AND HEALTH MANAGEMENT The Strengths and Weaknesses of the Engineering and Analytical Approaches to Hazard Avoidance There is no doubt that both engineering and analytical approaches are important and effective strategies used in industrial safety and health management. However, each of them has its strengths and weaknesses, so managers should be professional enough to determine which approach to use in this or that situation. The engineering approach views hazards as a linear combination of causes. It views risks as something resulting from unsecure system components, such as technology and operators. In fact, the importance of engineering approach to hazard avoidance is caused by accident analyses, which tries to determine whether incidents, which seem to be caused by workers thoughtlessness could have been prevented by a process redesign. Engineering approach is very effective because it requires not only precise numerical techniques and physical understanding of the hazard, but also taking into account all relevant standards of practice for a certain application (Reese, 2008). However, just like any approach, engineering strategy has a range of shortcomings. They are as follows: the engineering system itself can sometimes cause a hazard; workers may remove the purpose of engineering controls or safety devices; and certain unusual and unforeseen circumstances can make the engineering approach inappropriate or even unsafe. The analytical approach deals with hazards by studying their causes and mechanisms, weighting costs and benefits of hazard elimination, analyzing statistical data, calculating probabilities of hazards, and conducting toxicological and epidemiological studies. In fact, analytical approach usually disconnects the phenomenon under investigation into its component parts, which allows studying them more accurately, specifically, in detail, abstracting them from external links and random effects. In general, analytical approach has the following advantages: it provides a wide scope; it contains a variety of ideas; it enables to

INDUSTRIAL SAFETY AND HEALTH MANAGEMENT perform analyses involving components with static reliability values; and it studies the phenomenon in detail. Among the shortcomings of the analytical approach I would like to single out the fact that it is often mathematically challenging to obtain it; it is inappropriate in the unforeseen conditions; it is not able to make urgent decisions; and it is ineffective for analyses that require repairable systems with maintainability information and multiple additional events (Reese, 2008). The Steps Needed to Take in Order to be in Compliance with OSHA Reporting Requirements in a Case if a Fatal Accident As a safety manager of a company that just experienced a fatal accident involving a warehouse crane, I would take the following steps: I would orally report the fatality/multiple hospitalization by telephone to the central office of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, or in person to the OSHA office that is nearest to the site of the incident within 8 hours after the death of an employee or the in-patient hospitalization of three or more employees; I would provide the site and the time of the accident, my companys name, the number of employees killed and injured, and the names of all people, who suffered from the incident. Then, I would describe the accident that led to the fatality in detail. I would not leave a fatal incident report on an answering machine or voice mail message, as OSHA bans it (Reese, 2006). Although, OSHA does not require employees to report all incidents involving fatalities and multiple hospitalizations resulting from a motor vehicle accident, the case with a warehouse crane does not go this exception. This is because the exception includes the cases when the motor vehicle accident occurs on a public street or highway and does not occur in a construction work zone (Reese, 2006). As a warehouse is a construction work zone, I am obliged to report OSHA about the fatality. OSHAs New Requirements on the Prime/Subcontractor Relationship

INDUSTRIAL SAFETY AND HEALTH MANAGEMENT Since 1970, the OSHA has enforced safety regulations on the workplace. Almost 40 years OSHA has been able to adduce contractors for subcontractors safety violations, no matter what level of control over the subcontractor the general contractor had. However, recently, OSHA issued its newest requirements on the prime/subcontractor relationship, which says that both the general contractor and the subcontractor: creating the hazard and every other subcontractor on the site whose employees were exposed to the hazard may be cited for a single violation of OSHA regulations (Braver, 2012). Nevertheless, in fact, OSHA continued its policy of holding the general contractor responsible for the subcontractors safety violations. Historically, OSHA considered general contractors controlling employers (Braver, 2012). The new requirements oblige general contractors to exercise reasonable care to detect and prevent violations on the workplace. This reasonable care means two new obligations on general contractors: an informationgathering component, which requires them to know both about the safety history and safety practices of [its subcontractor] and about that [subcontractors] level of expertise, and contractual component, which requires contractors to conduct inspections of appropriate frequency (Braver, 2012). This means that general contractors are obliged to make frequent inspections on their subcontractors worksites. Moreover, OSHAs new policy makes general contractors obliged to prove that they work reasonably in this regard. This includes frequent inspection of subcontractors, correction of hazards, and imposition of punishment. I think that OSHA has made these changes in the prime/subcontractor relationship to make general contractors the main enforcers of its regulations.

INDUSTRIAL SAFETY AND HEALTH MANAGEMENT References Braver, S. (2012). The Imposition of New Obligations on General Contractors and the Expansion of Their Liability Under N.J. Common Law. New Jersey Law Journal, 21 (5), 41-42. Hammer, Willie & Price, Dennis. (2001). Occupational Safety Management and Engineering (5th Edition). Prentice Hall. Reese, Charles D. (2006). Handbook of OSHA Construction Safety and Health, Second Edition. CRC Press. Reese, Charles D. (2008). Occupational Health and Safety Management: A Practical Approach, Second Edition. CRC Press.