Wednesday, 10th March 2010.

During tough times, safety is first on the chopping list

Written on Monday, 27th July 2009 by Neeta

Power Plant Project site

Infrastructure projects are associated with huge capital investments and a defined timeline and related overrun expenses. These projects are monitored today with many sophisticated project management aids like Primavera, MS Projects and SAP project suites. When a project is conceived, it is having defined and measurable milestones and interlinking activities with specified durations. No project is planned for failure but it so happens that during the execution stage due to overruns and delays on many other accounts, projects get derailed and misses the deadlines.

All these projects are expected to follow rigorous safety guidelines and implement them in strict compliance to the various statutes acts as per the law of the land. But reality is different. Safety guidelines are quite often flouted in the name of urgency and targets. Various certifications which are being taken up by many reputed organizations are nothing but some sort of cosmetic makeovers to make them look elite.

Instead of opting for certifications, it is expected that organizations should focus on building a sound organization culture which should on its own lead to respecting of safety norms and guidelines. Certifications have no place in an organization if they fail to bring in sound organization culture and can not arrest accidents and incidents. OHSAS 18001:2007 doesn’t have any definition of “Accidents” in their definition of terms page instead it focuses on “Incidents” alone which are more relevant and give insight in to incidents which can lead to accidents.