The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) and the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) are well into their Step Up for Safety event that will be spanning February and March of 2016.
This event urges companies to conduct their own “Step Up” internally, which involves hosting safety activities like talks about hazard avoidance or hands on safety inspections, and so on. In order to help companies do so, OSHA and NIOSH along with the National Service, Transmission, Exploration and Production Safety Network (National STEPS) are providing informational tools on the event’s website. These tools include powerpoints, videos and PDFs about various safety topics.
The following topics are represented in the “Toolbox”: Falls, Struck-by and Dropped Objects, Fire and Explosion, Inspection Checklists, Tank Gauging Hazards, Silica and Hydraulic Fracturing, Behavior-Based Safety, Transportation, and Additional Resources.
After companies go through the toolbox and complete relevant trainings, OSHA, NIOSH and National STEPS ask that managers and business owners record the trainings they completed on the Step Up for Safety website. This information will only be used for assessing the scope and effectiveness of the Step Up for Safety program and will not be used to track any regulatory standards for individual businesses.
“Hazardous working conditions are taking the lives of a growing number of workers employed in oil and gas extraction,” said Assistant Secretary of Labor for Occupational Safety and Health Dr. David Michaels. “This safety step-up will help emphasize the tremendous value in dedicating time during a workday to improve safety and health.”
Even when no official national safety initiative is underway, keeping track of safety and health training in the oil and gas industry is crucial to maintaining worker health. Safety software allows managers and business owners to take stock of how long it has been since the last safety training session, for example, and provide a guideline for when new trainings are necessary.
