The feasibility of developing a common international safety and health management system was explored. Methods included the analysis of components of selected major safety and health management systems from around the world. Functional elements of selected systems were grouped in a spreadsheet format to identify common elements and key differences. Common elements of the selected systems were subjected to qualitative judgments of equivalency and then reconciled. With few exceptions, differing elements were revised to achieve cultural neutrality and adopted. Differing elements that could not be rendered cultural neutral were discarded. The resulting 98 system elements were organized according to the NOSA numbering and title scheme protocols. System element summaries were produced in Spanish and English. A self-assessment survey was conducted to evaluate pre-implementation conformance of the resulting system elements by operations in three distinct cultures. Results included the development and implementation of a consensus 98 element system internally named as the BHP Copper Five Star Safety System Performance Management Guidelines. Development of a common system for safety and health management within an organization with international operations can enhance the ability of the safety and health staff function to share resources, programs and subsystem improvements and thereby increasingly protect the safety and health of workers. Common systems can increase the level of management support by demonstrating increased compatibility of the safety and health management function with traditional business objectives. Safety professionals, industrial and occupational hygienists, business managers and the safety and health of workers will benefit from further development and articulation of common systems for safety and health management.
BHP is Australia's largest industrial corporation. The corporation employs over 70,000 people in 50 countries around the world. The major businesses of BHP are associated with natural resources extraction, and include the mining and production of copper, steel, petroleum, and numerous minerals. BHP Copper is the world's largest producer of copper, with 10% of the world's market, currently comprising 900,000 tons annually. BHP Copper mining operations are located in Chile, Peru, Papua New Guinea, and in Nevada and Arizona in the southwestern United States.
To assure safety remains a core value, the BHP parent corporation has published an Occupational Health and Safety policy and 23 standards that provides the basis for safety management at the operations. The corporation fundamentally assures the maintenance of safety as a core value by requiring that the business units and divisions be accountable for maintaining effective systems that embody the corporate standards and deliver the intent of the standards at each site of the corporation. A series of safety audits cascade from the corporate governance's unit of the Group Centre to each person's workplace to assure adequate systems are maintained.
