Dan -

I totally concur with your assessment. Going further, the prevailing attitude seems to be that 3,4 and 5 are the responsibility of EH&S, not for each member of the campus community. Changing that attitude through strong leadership by the senior campus officials is necessary to move up the scale. This is the essence of the recent APLU report and the core of the ACS Safety Culture document.

Neal

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From: DCHAS-L Discussion List [mailto:dchas-l**At_Symbol_Here**med.cornell.edu] On Behalf Of Daniel Crowl
Sent: Sunday, May 1, 2016 7:10 AM
To: DCHAS-L**At_Symbol_Here**MED.CORNELL.EDU
Subject: [DCHAS-L] Simple benchmarking scale for safety

=E2=80=8BWith all these lab incidents there has been a lot of discussion about what to do. One thing that is missing is a simple benchmarking scale to gauge your safety program.

Last July I was at a process safety workshop in Hong Kong and saw a presentation by Hugh Sullivan of ERM - a consulting firm. He presented a scale that works for all safety programs, including lab safety and process safety. I took the liberty of adding a 0 on the scale because, sadly, I have encountered this many times.

The benchmarking scale is:

0 - no safety program, maybe even disdain for safety.

1 - reacts to accidents only

2 - follows rules and regulations

3 - management systems exist such as hazard analysis, pre-startup reviews, etc.

4 - performance indicators - including leading and lagging

5 - adapting - safety is a core value

Several comments:

a. you need to work your way up thru the scale - you can't jump from 2 to 5

b. many folks think that following all rules and regulations is adequate. Sorry, but that only gets you to a 2.

Dan Crowl

Adjunct Professor, University of Utah

Professor Emeritus, Michigan Tech University