Safe Work Permitting: An Opportunity to Stop, Think, Improve
Process captures knowledge, serves as training tool and sets standards.
Georgia-Pacific is always looking for ways to improve safety performance, and in 2006, conducted a best practices survey of other companies that led to the implementation of Safe Work Permitting at all of our facilities.
"The goal of Safe Work Permitting is to make sure equipment owners and people working on the equipment are in agreement on the hazards and risks of the area, the equipment, and the job to be done," said George Taylor, director - occupational health and safety. "By completing a Safe Work Permit, everyone involved acknowledges the risks and that they have mitigated these risks."
The process was implemented at Georgia-Pacific's 300+ facilities late in 2006, and the company's operations are averaging 30,000 Safe Work Permits each month, said Taylor. The process starts when anyone, either a Georgia-Pacific employee or a contractor, needs to perform work on a piece of equipment. If the job is not considered routine, then a Safe Work Permit is required.
Total Case Incident Rate Down
"It makes everyone stop and think," said Ken Moseley, safety manager, wood products - plywood. "The person in charge of the equipment, and the person about to perform work on the equipment have to take a few minutes to talk about the work environment, make sure there are proper procedures in place, in writing, and then come to a consensus." In the plywood group, said Moseley, the Total Case Incident Rate (TCIR) is down significantly since implementing the process, and they have seen much less frequent, and less severe, cases of first aid.
"At first, people weren't sure about this process," said Moseley. "But we now have maintenance workers asking to go through the process even for routine jobs—because it may not be routine for them." And, he says, the time these permits take to complete is a small price to pay to prevent even one accident.
"This is an enormous job awareness exercise," said Taylor. "We are capturing knowledge, and writing standard operating and maintenance procedures."
Taylor summarized the benefits of Safe Work Permits into three key dimensions.
- Everyone has to stop and think, identify hazards and address them.
- All involved personnel must agree that risks have been addressed, promoting communication among work groups.
- And, by agreeing on the best way to do a job, it helps standardize and capture the information, becoming a training tool going forward.
The company has aggressive goals for continuing to improve its safety performance, and Safe Work Permitting is just one step in the improvement process. According to Taylor, "Our goal is have an injury and incident-free workplace."
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