Work standards and procedures

PLAN

• This stage covers two key issues: planning for implementation and policy. It is all about the P’s – PLANNING and POLICY.

• Planning for implementation means is to identify where we are now and then identifying where we want to be.

How are we going to control the risks associated with this equipment?

What is the most suitable equipment from a safety perspective?

What emergency procedures need to be put in place?

What are the training requirements?

Is any personal protective equipment required?

DO

The do stage looks at three key areas:

• Profiling the health and safety risks

• Organizing

• Implementing your plans

So in reality what does this mean?

• Identifying the risks through suitable and sufficient risk assessment.

• Organizing by identifying roles and responsibilities, communication procedures and ensuring competent personnel are in place.

• Implementation of the plan – ensuring risks are adequately controlled; correct maintenance procedures are in place and providing information, instruction, training and supervision to ensure people are competent and that procedures are followed.

CHECK

This is an important stage. Once we have implemented our plan we need to ensure that it is working effectively. To achieve this we need to MEASURE PERFORMANCE. Good quality performance monitoring will help us to identify problems, understand why the problems arose, and understand what changes are necessary to resolve the issues.

How do we do this?

• Inspection of the plant and equipment carried out on a regular or scheduled basis

• Job observations to check the effective operation of workplace precautions

• Health surveillance, for example, audiometry tests for signs of hearing loss (if the equipment introduced is noisy)

• Environmental monitoring, for example, measuring noise or dust levels

ACT

This is where we evaluate our health and safety performance to determine whether or not the essential principles of our plan and policy are being implemented correctly or whether there are improvements that can be made.