In the past, frequency and severity rates determine whether or not an organization has an effective safety program. This presentation introduces a new measure - Percent Safe. Examining Percent Safe alongside more traditional measures of safety gives a more complete picture of organizational safety.
ALCOA Vidalia Works already has an impressive safety record and a solid safety program, as measured by traditional measurement methods such as frequency and severity rates, and OSHA Recordables. However, they felt they could improve. ALCOA Vidalia Works partnered with Liberty Mutual Insurance Group to implement a safety performance management system. Safety performance is tracked on a regular basis, and is interpreted by Percent Safe work practices.
Baseline data collection revealed that on the eight most critical work activities performed actual performance was well below previously established goals. This performance gap was not noted until a safety performance management system was installed. Now with ALCOA Vidalia Works. safety performance management system installed and operating, this gap is closing. That is, safety performance is improving as measured by Percent Safe work practices.
Traditional safety measurement techniques do not always give a complete picture of safety within an organization. Determining the percentage of safe work practices that occur in an organization, in combination with tracking the more traditional measures, will give a comprehensive picture of safety.
Vic Garrison of Liberty Mutual Insurance Group will discuss the details of how this type of safety performance management program is implemented. John Standing of Liberty Mutual and Blake Hall of ALCOA Vidalia Works will discuss their experience of implementing the safety performance management system. John and Blake will also elaborate on what ALCOA Vidalia Works hoped to gain by implementing this type of program and to what extent their objectives have been realized. ALCOA Vidalia Works. safety performance data will be discussed to demonstrate the effect of a safety performance management system.
Liberty Mutual Loss Prevention developed a process called Managing Vital Performance? and started using it with customers about 1994. Managing Vital Performance?is a process where an operation measures their level of safety based on current observations of conditions and behaviors that are vital to the safe completion of the work at hand. The need for such a program is largely based on the belief that one can make better more informed decisions if the information being worked on is current, meaningful and specific rather than general and potentially misleading.
This concept is not entirely new. The history of this approach can be traced back to the early 1960's when information about safety sampling was first published. Proctor and Gamble was the first large corporation known to us to institute such a process and in recent years many other larger organizations have followed suit. Managing Vital Performance?as developed by Liberty Mutual Insurance Group is the safety performance management system implemented at ALCOA's Chemical Division in Vidalia, Louisiana.
