Safe Operating Procedures

Environmental Management Systems

Hazard & Risk Assessments

Auditing

Safe Operating Procedures

Employers are required to provide and maintain so far as is practicable for employees a working environment that is safe and without risks to health. Legislation, Acts and Regulations set out a number of specific duties which are examples of what is necessary in order to comply with the general duty of care. These include:

• Providing and maintaining safe plant and systems of work (for example regulating the pace and frequency of work)
• Arranging safe systems of work in connection with plant and substances (for example toxic chemicals, dusts and fibres);
• Providing a safe working environment (for example by controlling noise or vibration levels);

  Workplace Authorities place a heavy emphasis on having comprehensive, up-to-date procedures for employees. Indeed, the development and use of effective and user-friendly operating and maintenance procedures in process facilities is essential for safe and efficient operations.

  Procedures have as much impact on process safety as process equipment itself and the lack of Safe Operating Procedures is one of the most frequently cited violations by Workplace Authorities year-after-year and therefore deserves special attention to ensure compliance.

  Many companies assume their employees can write procedures simply by documenting what they do, however, this approach often produces ineffective procedures. There are much better approaches that can be used to write procedures that do not require any more work than the traditional “write what you do” approach and these new methods produce procedures that are much more effective and usable.

  Procedures that are properly written, documented and followed help to ensure that the knowledge required to safely operate processes and equipment is made available to relevant operating personnel, management, maintenance and safety personnel.

  Achievable Solutions helps design and develop procedures according to established principles and best practices to ensure they are written for their users. While much of our work focuses on Safe Operating Procedures for production and maintenance, we also help clients develop other facility procedures such as Emergency Procedures, System Procedures as well as Quality and Environmental.

  Achievable Solutions works with clients interactively to develop procedures and helps clients develop new procedures as well as revise existing procedures to meet current standards. We actively encourage the participation of those who will use the procedures in their development. Procedure users provide information on the actions required in the procedures and Achievable Solutions places this information into a format to ensure simplicity and usability.

  Sample courses that we provide are available for downloading