Getting Your Engineers/Designers On-board With Safety
Laura Belden, Sr. SME, Industrial Hygiene Group
noodleStream.com, LLC
Safety by Design, which is also referred to as Prevention through Design, is gaining more and more attention from companies dedicated to both the health and safety of their employees and their ROI. Articles published this past spring in the May 2008 issue of Professional Safety, the journal of the American Society of Safety Engineers (www.asse.org) and the March 2008 issue of Safety + Health, a magazine produced by the National Safety Council (www.nsc.org) explore the benefits the relatively new Safety by Design philosophy can offer industry.
These articles explore how Safety by Design accomplishes the goals of employee safety and improved ROI by incorporating employee health and safety into the workplace’s equipment or layout design, and reducing costs for raw materials and improving efficiency. The key in utilizing the Safety by Design approach is to train design engineers on the specifics of health and safety regulatory requirements, work place hazard assessments, and worker/equipment interaction.
The idea of Safety by Design is fairly new and is not a routine practice in the architectural and engineering design phase. Historically, Industrial Engineers have been the only engineering discipline to study the interaction of equipment layout with the workers involved. However, more engineering disciplines are now incorporating the idea of addressing and designing safety into the original equipment, layout and processing plans. If the engineers on your staff do not have that specific education or training, you might consider encouraging them to research the subject and find out how it can benefit your company.
You can also create a training program for your engineers emphasizing the importance of incorporating safety into every stage of design. Once they know the benefits of Safety by Design, they will also understand its direct effect on the safety of your employees and the potential reduced processing costs and increased productivity. Your engineers will become increasingly aware of how all aspects of their detailed plans and designs affect the safety of workers. It is also proven that the cost savings are great when safety requirements and safety aspects are designed into the original plans and not added later as an afterthought.