I’ll be making a contribution to the BOHS Conference in Cardiff this year, first thing on the Thursday morning, titled Managing the Design and Implementation of Controls – A Review
The usual definition Occupational hygiene is that it is :
the discipline of anticipating, recognising, evaluating and controlling health hazards in the working environment with the objective of protecting worker health and well-being and safeguarding the community at large.’ (Source : International Occupational Hygiene Association)
Recognition and evaluation are important steps but, for me, they’re a means to an end, not an end in themselves. As occupational hygienists our priority has to be control. The other steps should really be about providing us with information to help us to make decisions on minimising risks to health.
Unfortunately, controls are often badly designed and implemented, meaning that they are of limited effectiveness. There are a number of reasons for this, but, in my experience, ineffective control of exposure often occurs due to failures in the management process. If employers are to improve on this they need guidance. And occupational hygienists and other H & S professionals need to be able to analyse problems to help management avoid and overcome them.
My talk will outline a management framework that sets out the key steps for the effective specification, design and implementation of control measures. I’ll be including a number of case studies showing how the framework can be used to analyse and identify problems.
Inevitably, I only have limited time and can only provide a brief introduction to the framework, so I’ve produced a Slideshare presentation that provides some additional background and more details.
Recognition, Evaluation, Control 