Whether Systematic Follow-up Improves Compliance to Occupational Safety and Health Requirements at Project Sites? – A case study

Introduction
Identification of unsafe practices and highlighting the same for corrective action is a standard practice. During safety walk-down, everyday several observations get manually recorded and taken up with the line management for corrective actions. However, some of these observations remain unattended due to lack of regular follow-up and non-involvement of line management.

Methods
Considering the desired flow of information for hazard identification and mitigation, a “flow-chart” was prepared intending release of automatic follow-up notification to all concerned at a regular intervals. This was enabled to escalate to senior levels in the hierarchy based on the severity and time elapsed. This included auto generation of emails and short messaging alerts. This system was developed in “Dotnet” platform with SQL Server at the back-end and published in our in-house share point web-page called “EIP Vidhya”, accessible across the world at all project locations.

Results
186 number of high potential, 128 number of medium potential and 56 number of low potential observations were recorded.
While 40% observation remained unattended in manual system, 99.3% compliance was achieved through OMHSEO, over 65% improvement. Though incident frequency rate did not register significant change, the Severity rate registered a decent decrease of 96%.

Discussion
This web-based system has the ability to ensure regular follow-up of corrective actions at project sites which prompted people to act and rectify the hazards as it was connected to automatic escalation to their senior executives. Till the corrective actions are taken, the system keeps on reminding the line-managers prompting quick rectification of the deficiency.