Benefits of inspections

The purpose of this module is to provide you with an understanding of and insight into the measuring and monitoring of risk control.

The aim of this module is to provide you with the necessary information and activities to enable you to:

7. Conduct inspections for incident prevention and cost control by:

1. Interpreting the benefits of inspections.
2. Examining inspection elements and activities.
3. Examining the types of inspections. 

Workers, who are employed in a slowly changing work environment, become accustomed to minor modifications being made on a routine basis.  Sometimes they implement makeshift repairs and changes to temporarily correct work site problems.  

As such, they may not consider, nor be aware of, how the sum of these changes impacts employee and operational safety, health and environmental protection.  The potential for personal injuries, fire, equipment damage, process losses, regulatory deviations, detrimental environmental impacts and ergonomic hazards, may have been inadvertently introduced into the work place as a result of these changes.   

They will continue to go unnoticed until an appropriate inspection process is introduced which identifies and corrects the hazards that result from these changes.  

These same workers are exposed, either through their own actions or those of the employer, to equipment and materials that accumulate in the work place over time.  These accumulated materials and equipment create hazards by taking up valuable space needed for work, and thus forcing the work to be performed around them.  

This accumulated material and equipment also causes extra costs for obsolete inventory which is neither in use nor properly stored.  To compound the problem, this material and equipment is subject to damage, deterioration and loss through inappropriate disposal.  Inspections can identify these and other loss exposures.

In work forces with long term employees, there may be a reluctance to change equipment and acts because, “We’ve always done it this way”.  However, the status quo simply isn’t good enough.  New technologies and better information on workplace hazards may demand that equipment and acts be reviewed and upgraded to meet current standards.  

Normal wear and tear on equipment, introducing and using new chemicals, introducing new acts and procedures, staffing changes, and modifications to operational equipment all serve to increase the potential for losses.  This is especially true if no processes are in place to prevent these losses from occurring.  To effectively prevent these losses, a systematic process for identifying and correcting hazards must be in place.  

The introductory paragraphs of the “Causes and Consequences” module provide a rationale for incident prevention. 

Incident prevention can be managed by implementing and using a systematic process to identify, analyse and correct substandard workplace acts or conditions which could lead to losses.  Losses include personal injuries or occupational illnesses, fires, explosions, process losses, quality deviations, environmental losses and regulatory fines.  

The regular and thorough inspection activities which an operation undertakes on a frequency consistent with the risk, provides a way to reduce the potential for these losses through the identification, analysis and correction of workplace hazards before incidents occur.  

The frequency at which inspections are conducted should be based on the potential for failure.  Experience has shown the most likely time for failure to occur in any system, part or employee is in that period following entry into service.  Should that failure not happen, then the system, part or employee will likely continue to operate satisfactorily until near the end of its useful life.  At that time, more attention must be paid to potential for failure.  This concept is best demonstrated by the following diagram in Figure 1. 

Adequate and thorough inspections provide significant benefits to the operation by providing the opportunity for:

• Identifying and correcting improper acts or conditions which may lead to loss. Identifying the cause(s) of these acts or conditions may lead to improvements in areas such as the tools provided to employees to perform their work, the design of future equipment, the removal of deficiencies in the training programme, or advanced supervisory training.
• Reconfirming equipment adequacy. Backlogs experienced in production, warehousing or delivery may be the result of abnormal wear and tear leading to more frequent breakdowns, increased maintenance costs and higher accidental losses.  The backlogs could also indicate poor co-ordination between those responsible for performing the work and those who are responsible for purchasing the equipment and materials which meet the proper purchasing specifications and work place needs.
• Identifying planned and ad-hoc changes. Changes made within the work place may not have been fully reviewed to identify their impact on worker demand, task spacing, work flow, raw material storage, etc.  Installation may not have been according to drawings and been modified to “make fit”.  Maintenance personnel may have added or modified equipment based on the perceived needs of the operator.
• Identifying ergonomic needs. Changes to the pace, i.e. frequency of operation, positioning, lifting, gripping and turning requirements may have adverse effects on the operators and could lead to cumulative trauma disorders resulting in substantial ongoing compensation costs.
• Identifying environmental impact of operations. Changes to process, production acts, inadequate maintenance, increased emissions and liquid discharges could result in increased costs, regulatory clean-up orders and litigation expenses.
• Demonstrating concern for employee welfare. Including members of management in the inspection process provides an opportunity for them to hear and discuss issues and concerns affecting the workers.  Decisions on resolving these issues should be provided to the worker through direct communication, and to the department through notices on the bulletin board(s).
• Identifying and reinforcing proper acts. Positive, timely feedback to employees concerning their work habits is a strong motivator for proper performance and serves to demonstrate management’s concern for proper application of work procedures contributing to a safe and healthy working environment.
• Identifying the effectiveness of their stewardship. Members of management can directly observe the outcome of their decisions affecting the work, the working environment and staffing by doing inspections.  The general health of the work place: e.g. the housekeeping, the state of the equipment, the adequacy of raw materials, the storage of materials and equipment, the quality of the products, the adequacy of lighting, etc. are the direct result of good or bad decisions made by management. 
• Identifying the effectiveness of corrective actions. Managers need to reconfirm that the actions taken to address the root causes and prevent the recurrence of accidents, has been effective.

An inspection is a methodical observation process for performing close, critical examination of structures, materials, equipment, acts and conditions.

Inspections are conducted by trained and knowledgeable employees to identify newly introduced or emerging/evolving hazards in the work environment in order to prevent losses.  Observations are tested against recognised codes, standards and regulations.  An inspection is not complete when the observations have been conducted.  These observations must be noted, classified for hazard potential, assessed for their risk potential, corrective actions identified and accountability for timely corrective actions assigned to managers.  When properly conducted, inspections provide management with insights into the effectiveness of their stewardship of the company’s resources.

Peter Drucker is quoted as saying:

“The first responsibility of management is not the maximisation of profit, but the minimisation of loss.”

A goal of the SHEQ programme is to minimise losses.  Therefore, all managers, and others in leadership roles, should be held accountable for the elimination or reduction of work place hazards which contribute to losses in their areas of responsibility. 

Accidents are costly in terms of human suffering, decaying employee morale, lost production, equipment damage, product delivery delays and customer loyalty.  All managers share the costs associated with accidents in any department of the operation, through the lost productivity that occurs when employees congregate to discuss the details of the accident and share mutual concerns.  In the context of the following discussion about inspections, “manager” refers to any employee responsible for the stewardship, or care of, company assets and resources.  Managers may not necessarily be a member of the management team.