Ebook: Monitoring, Measuring, and Improving Safety Performance

Accurately measuring safety performance and the most effective indicators. How to choose the correct tools for the job and deal with any safety issues recognized.

This eBook focuses on:

  • How safety performance should be measured: Discusses why and when safety performance should be measured, along with who it should be measured by and working out what to concentrate on. Perhaps, the results of poor safety performance as well as successful methods of accident prevention.
  • Most frequently used indicators: Concentrates on lagging and leading indicators. Lagging safety performance indicators focus on past accident statistics, such as days lost and compensation costs. Leading indicators concentrate on the prevention of these accidents and changes in health and safety requirements which have previously been beneficial.
  • How to choose the correct tools and techniques:  Provides advice on deciding which tools and techniques will be most successful. Perhaps using more than one, e.g. the likelihood of an accident occurring again (lagging) and why it happened in the first place (leading).
  • How to deal with recognized health and safety issues: Discusses the procedure of behavior analysis and how to reinforce safe behavior, along with developing new health and safety standards to deal with any problems.

In ‘Strategies for Achieving Excellence in Construction Safety Performance, author E. J. Jaselskis states the main ways of developing better construction safety performance as:

Upper management support, time devoted to safety issues from company safety coordinator, number of informal safety inspections made by the company coordinator, meetings with field safety representatives and craft workers, length and detail of company safety program, and safety training for new foremen and safety coordinators.

Some of the main benefits of effectively measuring and monitoring safety performance are mentioned in this eBook. They include, not just recognizing the number of accidents and understanding why they occurred, but also using the leading indicators to measure improvement and recognize what people are doing right.