Total Environmental Health and Safety Management

Unit Assignments

Unit I Journal

Think about the concept of acceptable risk. Provide your thoughts on acceptable risk as it applies to the workplace or even your everyday life. What are the ethical ramifications of applying the concept to real-life situations for you?

Your journal entry must be at least 200 words in length. No references or citations are necessary.

Unit II Journal

Describe how your organization or an organization you are familiar with manages occupational safety and health. To what extent are executives and facility managers committed to the OSH effort, and to what extent are front-line employees involved? What level of effort is exerted to ensure that hazards are evaluated and controlled? Are there continuous improvement efforts in place?

Your journal entry must be at least 200 words in length. No references or citations are necessary.

Unit III Journal

We have said that managers, supervisors, and employees all have individual responsibilities for safety and need to be held accountable. What, then, do you see is the role of safety professionals? How should they be held accountable? What has been your observation or experience in this regard as a safety professional or while dealing with safety professionals?

Your journal entry must be at least 200 words in length. No references or citations are necessary.

Unit III Scholarly Activity

You were recently hired as an occupational safety and health consultant for Gemstone Fabricators, a medium-sized manufacturing facility that makes stainless steel counters, containers, and carts for the food prep and restaurant industries. Several years ago, Gemstone decided it wanted to become an Occupational Safety and Health Adminstration (OSHA) Voluntary Protection Program (VPP) site. It also wants to send the application to OSHA in the upcoming year. Gemstone Fabricators expressed an interest to align with the ANSI/ASSP Z10.0-2019 and ANSI/ASSP/ISO 45001-2018 standard.
In going through the application submission materials, you noticed something that threw up a red flag, however. Although there was an accountability requirement specified in front-line workers’ performance evaluation documentation for safety performance, there was no such requirement in the performance evaluation documentation for supervisors, managers, or executives. Your discussions with employees also suggest that, although the employer wants the front-line workers to be heavily involved in the safety effort, they are not always sure exactly what they are supposed to be doing to help move the company’s safety programs forward.

Another issue that concerns you is that the effort to implement a safety and health management systems approach appears to be somewhat piecemeal. You are finding it difficult to identify a clear Plan-Do-Check-Act approach to continuous improvement.
Please compose a two-page document for your client to include your evaluation of these deficiencies along with an explanation of the significance of these problems in relation to the safety and health management systems approach. Your goal is to help the employer understand why these issues need to be attended to prior to submitting your application. In your response, be sure to do the following things: include an introduction that establishes the issues and provides necessary background information, assess the importance of establishing safety accountability measures for managers, employees, and safety professionals, appraise the assignment of safety-related job tasks, and apply the Plan-Do-Check-Act framework to resolve a safety deficiency.
Your Scholarly Activity must be a minimum of two pages in length, and it should be in APA format. You must use a minimum of one scholarly resource. Any information from this source should be cited and referenced in accordance with APA guidelines.

Unit IV Journal

Reflect on how your organization or an organization with which you are familiar identifies and analyzes hazards. Put the process in context by also describing what the organization does. Do you think the existing process is effective? How could you, as a safety professional, offer suggestions for improvement?

Your journal entry must be at least 200 words in length. No references or citations are necessary.

Unit IV Project

Hazard Analysis and Risk Assessment Project

Be sure to read all of the instructions. There are two documents to be prepared and submitted.

1. Following steps 1-11 of the Hazard Analysis and Risk Assessment Guide in the course textbook (pp. 172-177), develop a risk assessment for a serious workplace hazard with which you are familiar, view Appendix 2 found in the OSHA document Job Hazard Analysis to help you select a hazard. Evaluate the hazard and its associated risks, and then complete the Hazard Analysis and Risk Analysis Project form. To complete the Initial Risk Assessment and Post Control Risk Assessment sections, use the following codes based on the Risk Assessment Matrix in Table 9.7 (p. 178) of the textbook:
   Severity:
   1 – Catastrophic
   2 – Critical
   3 – Marginal
   4 – Negligible
   Probability (Likelihood of Occurrence):
   A – Frequent B – Probable
   C – Occasional D – Remote
   E – Improbable
   Risk Code:
   H – High
   S – Serious M – Medium L – Low
   All sections of the form must be completed. Note that the “Post Control Risk Assessment Measures” section reflects the risk assessment after applying the additional control measures.
2. In a separate document of at least one page, explain the reasoning behind how you filled out each section of the form.

How would the control measures affect the assessment? You must use at least your textbook for this assignment, and other resources may be used as needed.
Upload both the completed form and the discussion document. Be sure that the discussion document is in APA format with a title page and a reference page and any information from a resource is properly cited in APA Style.

Unit V Journal

What has been your experience with hazard controls? Does your organization use a decision hierarchy, or does it go right to personal protective equipment (PPE) or training after identifying a hazard? How could your organization improve in this area? If you have no experience with hazard controls, provide an example of a hazard where you imagine starting at the bottom of the hierarchy would be the easiest path for management to take. How can we overcome this tendency?

Your journal entry must be at least 200 words in length. No references or citations are necessary.

Unit V Article Review

In the CSU Online Library, go to the ABI/Inform Collection database, and perform a publication search for “professional safety.” This should take you to a page where you can perform a search from within the publication itself. Perform an additional search within the publication using “return on investment” as a search term. Access the ABI Inform Publication Search for instructions on how to do this.
Select an article that deals with considering return on investment when deciding upon the implementation of hazard controls.
Write a review of the article that includes the following items: a brief introduction to the article,
a summary and analysis of the key points in the article,
a discussion related to the concept of return on investment considerations for advocating the implementation of appropriate controls, and
a summary of the article’s conclusions and your own opinions.
The article review must be in APA format and at least two pages in length, not counting title and reference pages.

Unit VI Journal

If you are a safety professional, reflect on ways in which you participate in design reviews at your organization or how you wish you could participate. If you are not yet a safety professional, find out if your current organization has safety design reviews, or find examples of recent project designs or purchases that you feel would have been made safer through a safety design review process.

Your journal entry must be at least 200 words in length. No references or citations are necessary.

Unit VI Essay

In this unit, you have learned about reducing risks through safety design. For this assignment, you will further explore that topic. Compose an essay in which you summarize the fundamentals of the safety design review process, systems safety, and prevention by design. In your essay, you should address the following issues:
Describe the safety design review process.
Explain the role and importance of safety design reviews in a safety management system. Discuss how these concepts inter-relate with the safety management systems approach.

Your essay must be a minimum of two pages in length, and it should use standard essay format with an introduction, a body, and a conclusion. You must use a minimum of two scholarly sources in addition to your textbook. Any information from these sources should be cited and referenced in APA Style, and your paper should be formatted in accordance with APA guidelines.

Unit VII Journal

Think about any experiences you have had with process improvement methodologies such as lean, Six Sigma, total quality

management, or others. What was the focus of the improvement? Was safety part of the process? Based on what you have learned in this unit, could the process have been improved?

If you have no experience with process improvement, discuss how lean concepts could be incorporated where you work or used to work.

Your journal entry must be at least 200 words in length. No references or citations are necessary.

Unit VIII Journal

Discuss how you can apply the concepts learned in this course to your current or future career. How might the lessons you have learned positively affect your career success?

Your journal entry must be at least 200 words in length. No references or citations are necessary.

Unit VIII Course Project

1. Conduct an audit of the following safety management system elements at your organization or an organization with which you are familiar and have access to the required information:

SAFETY MANAGEMENT SYSTEM ELEMENTS	ANSI/AIHA Z10.0-2019 SECTIONS	COURSE TEXTBOOK CHAPTERS
1. Occupational Health and Safety Management System	3.1.1	2
2. Occupational Health and Safety Policy	3.1.2	2
3. Responsibility and Authority	3.1.3	2
4. Employee Participation	3.2	2
5. Review Process, Assessment, and Prioritization	4.1, 4.2	12
6. Risk Assessment	5.1.1	4
7. Hierarchy of Controls	5.1.2	4 and 11
8. Design Review	5.1.3	12
9. Management of Change	5.1.3	14
10. Procurement	5.1.4	15
11. Monitoring and Measurement	6.1	16
12. Incident Investigation	6.2	16 and 19
13. Audits	6.3	18
14. Corrective and Preventive Actions	6.4	16
15. Feedback to the Planning Process	6.5	16

Below, you will find some suggested sources for the objective evidence to support your evaluation:

Documents: Organizational safety manuals and instructions, safe operating procedures, and job hazard analyses Records: E-mails or letters from management to employees, safety meeting minutes, mishap logs, audit reports, Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) citations, inspection reports, risk assessments, and training records
Interviews: Management personnel, supervisors, and employees
Observation: Walk through some workplaces to observe conditions for yourself.

2. For each management system element, discuss the objective evidence you found or were unable to find. Evaluate the effectiveness of the organization’s implementation of each element against available reference sources and best practice information. Use the following four-tier evaluation scheme to rate each element:

World Class: OHS performance
Strong: Conforming/complete, may have minor gaps with action plans
Moderate: Scattered non-conformances need to be addressed, positive trends/major elements in place
Limited: Multiple or significant systemic non-conformances exist.

Appropriate references include the course textbook; textbooks from other college-level courses; ANSI/AIHA Z10-2019; other published consensus standards like ANSI, ASSE, AIHA, ISO, and NFPA; OSHA standards and voluntary guidelines; and articles published in professional journals. Blogs, Wikipedia, About.com, Ask.com, and other unmonitored Internet resources are not considered scholarly references and should not be used. Please contact your professor if you have any questions about the appropriateness of a source.

3. If an element is found to be less than World Class, provide recommendations for improvement. Be sure to use appropriate scholarly sources to support your recommendations.
4. Provide a summary of the overall status of the organization’s safety management system, and comment on the degree of alignment between the safety management system and other management system efforts utilized at the facility.
   The Unit VIII Course Project must be at least seven pages and a maximum of 10 pages in length, not counting the title and references pages. In addition to your textbook, please provide at least five professional sources.

APA Guidelines

The application of the APA writing style shall be practical, functional, and appropriate to each academic level, with the primary purpose being the documentation (citation) of sources. CSU requires that students use APA style for certain papers and projects. Students should always carefully read and follow assignment directions and review the associated grading rubric when available.