Sustainability & Risk/ Health & Safety / Objectives

Safety Officers Managing Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) for Staff

Objective

Tasks at many job sites require that an employee wear protective equipment, such as goggles, hard shoes, hard hats, safety vests, and air masks. These types of items -- known as personal protection equipment ( PPE ) -- help to ensure workplace safety by:

reducing workplace injuries
reducing illnesses that results from contact with chemical, radiological, electrical, mechanical, and other workplace hazards.

A company's use of these items may be good preventive safety practice, or may be mandated by government regulations.

When an employer fails to provide its employees with the proper safety equipment, it jeopardizes the employee's health and safety, as well as that of their co-workers. Moreover, a site may be subject to hefty fines for failing to provide PPE or replace it in a timely manner. To avoid these problems, the safety officer must ensure that the appropriate PPE is distributed to employees based on the tasks that they perform, and must also manage the replacement of this equipment due to normal wear-and-tear.

Solution

The Health & Safety application provides safety officers with an automated system to manage the many details of assigning and replacing PPE.

First, the safety manager enters the details of the PPE used at the site, and can upload into the Archibus document library the manufacturer's user manuals, internal training manuals on using the PPE, and any other supporting materials.

For each particular type of work, as well as for specific items for individual employees, safety managers can use the Archibus system to define the required PPE and set up a schedule for its replacement. The system tracks when the item is actually delivered to the employee, and even stores the signed receipt of the employee accepting delivery of the item, thereby providing a detailed audit trail of PPE items.

This type of PPE documentation can be vital for proving compliance with government regulations, providing an audit trail for industry investigations, or settling disability claims.

From the employees' point of view, the Health & Safety system helps them stay abreast of PPE scheduled deliveries by providing:

a notification system that notifies employees of upcoming PPE deliveries. See Notifying Employees of Safety Program Requirements
a self-service report for checking PPE scheduled and past deliveries. See Employees Checking on their Safety Program Requirements, Work Restrictions, and Workplace Accidents

Procedures

Define PPE for an Employee and Schedule its Delivery

Define the types of PPE used at the site by working with the Background Data / Define PPE Types task .
In order to assign PPE by job type (work category), the safety officer must first:

define employee work categories using the Background Data / Define Work Categories task .
assign PPE to work categories. See Define the PPE Requirements for a Work Category.
assign employees to work categories using the Work Categories / Track Employee Work Categories task .

With work category information established, schedule estimated PPE delivery for an employee via their work categories .
Perhaps an employee requires additional, specific PPE that is not part of the PPE requirements for the employee's work categories. For these cases, you must schedule PPE delivery for an employee .

Document the Delivery of PPE to an Employee

When the PPE is delivered to the employee, the safety officer records its receipt. See Enter the Details of Delivering PPE.

Assign PPE as a Response to a Workplace Accident

As a follow-up response to a workplace accident, a safety officer may determine that additional PPE is required for this employee or that PPE was damaged in the accident and must be replaced. See Entering Employee-Specific Response to an Incident .