JHA Essay: Assessing Risk in My Organization

Unit III JHA Essay: Assessing Risk in My Organization

BOS 3001, Fundamentals of Occupational Safety and Health

Columbia Southern University

Unit III JHA Essay: Assessing Risk in My Organization

Risk Assessments Used

The Air Force Safety program is governed by Air Force Instructions (AFI). We use these as a way to tell us step by step what we should do in a given job, task, or scenario. The specific AFIs used for our safety program are AFI 91-203, Air Force Consolidated Occupational Safety Instruction and AFI 91-202, The US Air Force Mishap Prevention Program. AFI 91-203 states that supervisors have the responsibility to conduct Job Safety Analysis (JSA) as required by tasks to ensure the safety of the work environment, (Mueller, 2017). AFI 91-202 gives us air force members the instructions or the sequence of steps we should follow to complete a JSA in Attachment 5. Also included in Attachment 5 is a JSA worksheet for easy reference. The information contained in these AFIs isn’t exactly original or necessarily just specific to Air Force but pulled from multiple sources just like any good safety program guidance.

My specific job within the Air Force is as a Professional Military Education Instructor, so mostly my job is administrative. We still have a safety program and conduct initial safety training, annual safety trainings, monthly safety briefings, and monthly safety inspections with written memorandums of record. We also conduct accident investigations when needed and follow Air Force guidance for that as well as control methods.

Control Methods Used

As covered above we use AFIs in my occupation to guide us in our completion of safety requirements and they give us the tools method for of control. After completing a JSA, initial or annual training in our specific sections we have to track that training. In the Air Force we use a form referred to a AF Form 55, Employee Safety and Health Record, this form not only tracks all of our training and precautions it is used any time an accident occurs. AFI 91-203 states that “As hazards are identified, the supervisor shall include this information as part of the initial employee safety briefing required by the prescribing directive for JSAs (AFI 91-202)”, (Mueller, 2017). We don’t maintain very many hazardous chemicals but we do have a few for cleaning purposes. For these chemicals we use what we refer to as Safety Data Sheets (SDS) these are documents that are used to meet the intent of 29 CFR 1910.1200(g). All the chemicals in our possession are kept in the same location with the SDS easily viewable by anyone that has the potential of accessing them. In order to improve your safety program, you must be willing to scrutinize it and make improvements when necessary.

Critiquing Strategies in the Workplace

Currently I am the safety monitor for my work section. This specific job for me is what we call an additional duty and has a low priority compared to my primary job and tasks associated with being the safety monitor are only completed on a as needed basis or after all tasks assigned to my primary job are completed first. My work section consists of a three-person team and we have the same amount of additional duties as a section with twenty people so we have to rack and stack or prioritize our additional duty tasks. By prioritizing tasks such as monthly safety inspections or job safety analyses it tends to give us more time to complete the task but can also sometimes make us some time rush during monthly inspections or to rush through accident investigations which has the potential to cause more harm later on. By failing to conduct an in-depth investigation we are not avoiding one of the ten accident investigation mistakes, which according to William R. Coffee Jr., is something safety and health professionals should avoid making these mistakes when conducting an accident investigation, (Goetsch, 2015). One other thing we could do better on in my organization or work section is completing these JSAs. Currently we barley gloss over our initial job safety training due to it’s high administrative nature. I believe if we conducted a more thorough JSA we would be more proactive versus reactive which is the intent of the job safety analysis.