In the facilities where industrial activities are carried out, standards and procedures that guarantee safety must be applied. For this reason, we speak of industrial safety. The main purpose of any industrial safety plan is, logically, to minimize any possible threat or risk that could harm the industry, both the people who work in it, as well as the environment or infrastructures.
Organizational model
For a company in an industrial sector to adopt a series of security measures, the following conditions must be met:
1) a general legal norm (for example, a decree),
2) a regulation that guides the safety guidelines that must be followed and
3) Complementary technical instructions detailing all the specific aspects of a company's security.
Basic principles of industrial safety
The concept of security must be understood as a set of legal, technical and human elements that are oriented towards levels of risk that can be considered tolerable.
Safety regulations are basically aimed at guaranteeing the physical integrity of workers.
Technical knowledge is essential and in this sense, security professionals must know all the aspects involved (materials used, work processes, organizational methods ...).
In any industrial safety plan you have to define what the dangers and risks are. These two concepts may seem equivalent, but they are not. A hazard is something that is identified, while risk is assessed. Thus, a hazard is a potential energy of damage and a risk is the probability that the hazard will materialize. Thus, cars on the roads constitute a danger and the fact of crossing a road is a risk.
Industrial safety plans include a series of sections:
1) occupational risk prevention programs in which the different responsibilities of workers are structured,
2) methods and objectives to apply the occupational risk prevention policy and the consequent review and self-evaluation of the same and
3) external control systems through independent audits that can evaluate all industrial safety processes.
For everything related to industrial safety to be effective, occupational hygiene criteria are also incorporated. Hygiene is understood as the set of guidelines that tend to protect the physical and mental integrity of the worker.
Photos: Fotolia - Osmancendeoglu / Balint Radu
