Abstract

The Safety Performance Evaluation Checklist (SPEC) is an application of modern safety management practices. It has been designed as a simple and practical self-assessing tool for managers, supervisors and Loss Prevention personnel to measure "overall Safety and Health performance" in their department/section on a quarterly, biannually, or yearly basis. SPEC also allows top or middle management to compare the performance of one department/section to another under the same hazard exposure or work category.

The SPEC is made for four purposes:

• To measure accountability

• To unearth substandard performance and conditions and determine their causative factors.

• To help managers and supervisors determine appropriate corrective actions to rectify uncovered discrepancies.

• To recognize and reward good performers.

The SPEC concept incorporates some essential elements of modern safety management systems. A minimum of 6 criteria have to be used to evaluate the safety performance of any organization, department, or section - namely,

• Housekeeping

• Life safety and fire protection

• Personal protection

• Procedure and training

• Record keeping

• Incident/accident experience

Each criteria above has a different number of items and scores to indicate a different level of performance with ranges from 1 to 6, or from not applicable to excellent. All criteria applicable to a particular department/section will be regarded as the established safety related objective of that particular department/section. However, for further improvement of SPECS' effectiveness and efficiency as well as operation safety, managers and supervisors are encouraged to establish realistic objectives for their department/section in addition to those which have been established in the SPEC. They are challenged to improve the quality of the SPEC by establishing more criteria applicable to their operation such as: management safety inspection; emergency preparedness and drill; hazards identification, evaluation and control; safety communications, etc.