Introduction and Background

The American Society of Safety Engineers (ASSE) is the oldest and largest society of safety professionals in the world. Foundedin 1911, ASSE represents over 30,000 dedicated safety professionals. ASSE is the secretariat of eight (8) American National Standards Committees, which were just reaccredited with high marks, which makes the Society the largest holder of safety/health standards projects. This involvement goes back to 1921 with the secretariat of A14 Ladder Standards, which makes ASSE an ANSI charter secretariat. In addition, we have over forty (40) safety professionals/ASSE representatives serving on various ANSI, NFPA, ASME, and ASTM committees.

The charter of the American National Standards Committee, Z490 Criteria for Best Practices in Safety, Health and Environmental Training, was accredited by the American National Standards Institute (ANSI) on April 1, 1998. The standard itself was approved by ANSI on July 2, 2001, and it grew out of the recognized need for improvement in safety, health, and environmental training. Quality training is required to ensure that workers and safety, health, and environmental professionals have the knowledge, skills, and abilities necessary to protect themselves and others in the workplace. Both the public and private sector have continued to wrestle with training issues on both an internal and external basis for many years. This includes everything from training requirements for specific standards to the potential accreditation of specific training programs.

Four (4) years ago, April, 1996, ASSE conducted focus group meetings across the country…two (2) in Houston, two (2) in Chicago, two (2) in Gaithersburg, MD, involving over a hundred training experts from business, industry, professional societies, trade associations, training providers, and both large and small operations. The purpose of the meetings was to learn if ASSE should venture into accreditation of training organizations programs as well as ascertaining the market interest in procuring such accreditation. The Society hired an organization expert in facilitating these accreditation efforts. After much analysis, further discussion, even including the consultant, and more debate, the consensus was for ASSE to pursue an American National Standards training standards project.

The rationale ASSE offered ANSI in filing the application for establishing the project was that these safety, health, and environmental training standards would improve areas of competence, quality and effectiveness. The objective is to obtain standards of quality, which ensures that SH&E training providers meet such standards. The standards of Best Practice, now called Accepted Practice, can help employers and consumers of training services select quality safety and health training materials, instructors, and other program components. Onceestablished, these standards can be used to audit, monitor, evaluate, analyze, etc. national, industry-wide training of large and small training service providers as well as for corporations and government entities seeking third-party review of their employee training activities.

Adding weight to this rationale was the approval of the ANS Z390.1-1995 (R-standard, Accepted Practices for H2S Training, where industry demonstrated its support for such training criteria.

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