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Recent changes in the world of work have led to increased job demands with subsequent effects on occupational safety. Although work intensification has been linked to detrimental safety behavior and more accidents, there is so far no sufficient explanation for this relationship. This paper investigates the mediating roles of safety climate, safety motivation, and safety knowledge in the relationships of work intensification with components of safety performance at an organizational level. Safety engineers and managers from 122 Austrian high-accident companies participated in a cross-sectional survey. In line with our hypotheses, work intensification negatively related to both components of safety performance: safety compliance and safety participation. The results of a serial multiple mediation analysis further revealed safety climate and safety motivation to be serial mediators of the relationship between work intensification and safety performance. Unexpectedly, safety knowledge and safety climate only serially mediated the relationship between work intensification and safety compliance, but not the relationship between work intensification and safety participation. This study provides evidence for the detrimental effect of work intensification on safety performance across organizations. Additionally, this study offers an explanation as to how work intensification affects safety performance, enabling practitioners to protect their occupational safety procedures and policies from work intensification.

• CSE is a new official profession in China. • Reviewed the history and development of CSEs in China. • Given an introduction to the administrative regulation on CSEs in China. • Introduced the important requirements regarding CSEs in China. Developing a group of good safety professionals is a key foundation for improving a country's work safety and health. In China, the widespread concern and discussion on the development of safety professionals, or more specifically Certified Safety Engineers (CSEs) started in the early 1990s. In recent years, especially after 2002, China's CSEs entered into a holistic, systematic and rapid development period because of the formal establishment and implementation of the professional qualification system for CSEs in 2002. Moreover, CSE is now becoming the most important profession in the field of work health and safety in China, and it has been officially approved by the central government. China has rich experiences on the development and cultivation of CSEs. However, these experiences were little known to the outside world due to the lack of efficient communication. Firstly, this paper briefly reviews the history and development of CSEs in China. Then, the administrative regulation and important requirements (such as capacity requirements and the knowledge framework) regarding CSEs in China are briefly introduced. This research aims at promoting the cooperation and exchange of information on the development and cultivation of safety professionals between China and other countries, to offer useful evidence and suggestions for the development of safety professionals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A significant gap exists between accident scenarios as foreseen by company safety management systems and actual scenarios observed in major accidents. Its mere existence, pointing at flawed risk assessments, is leaving hazards unmitigated, threatening worker safety, putting the environment at risk and endangering company continuity. Safety managers and regulators, attempting to reduce and eventually close this gap, not only encounter the pitfalls of poor safety studies, but also the acceptance of "unknown risk" as a phenomenon, companies being numbed by inadequate process safety indicators, unsettled debates between paradigms on improving process safety, and inflexible recording systems in a dynamic industrial environment. The immediacy of the stagnating long term downward major accident rate trend in the Netherlands underlines the need to address these pitfalls. The main conclusion is that safety management can never be ready with hazard identification and risk assessment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Introduction : Safety management is frequently treated as non-essential and incidental to core business functions. Accordingly, the importance of safety management is often underestimated. The Theory of Quality Management was investigated in this study to find the degree of linkage between the management of quality and safety. Method : Data derived from a 40-item online survey were used to test the Theory of Quality Management model factors among quality and safety professionals. The surveys were distributed to quality and safety professionals represented by the American Society for Quality (ASQ) and American Society of Safety Engineers (ASSE), for a total of 144 completed surveys, with the largest number coming from manufacturing organizations. Results : the findings suggest good internal consistency for the variables and good correlations between the quality and safety professional responses. Conclusions : This study offers evidence that the organizational functions of safety and quality can follow the same management model, broadening the understanding of the Theory of Quality Management from focusing only the management of quality, to embracing the management of safety. Practical Application : The finding could help establishments improve overall worker safety and health using quality tools and techniques. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we propose a modified proximal gradient method for a class of sparse optimization problems, which arise in many contemporary statistical and signal processing applications. The new method uses a new scheme to construct the descent direction based on the proximal gradient method. It is proven that the modified proximal gradient method is Q-linearly convergent without the assumption of the strong convexity of the objective function. Numerical experiments have been conducted to evaluate the proposed method. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Preventive replacement policy conducted at a routine time T ∗ has been surveyed extensively in literatures. Another two random replacement times Y 1 and Y 2 for time T ∗ are jointly considered in this paper. We formulate the models of replacement first, replacement last and replacement middle, which are based on the respective assumptions of whichever occurs first, whichever occurs last and whichever occurs middle. Next, we modify replacement first and replacement last by using whichever occurs first and last jointly. Furthermore, we give the model of replacement overtime when the assumptions of whichever occurs first, whichever occurs last and replacing the unit over time T are simultaneously considered. Comparisons among these replacement models are made to find which policy is more economical than the other. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It has been proposed in recent literatures that if replacement time is planned too early prior to failure time, a waste of operation cost, i.e., excess costs, would incur because the system might run for an additional period of time to complete critical operations; and if the replacement time is too late after failure, a great failure cost, i.e., shortage cost, is incurred due to the delay in time of the carelessly scheduled replacement. The above notion of shortage and excess costs are taken into consideration for the replacement first, replacement last and replacement overtime models in this paper. We obtain the expected cost rates and their optimum replacement times. Comparisons among these optimum times are made analytically and numerically. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses how professional development in industrial safety can be achieved. Professional development can be considered one part of a three-part cycle, the first part of which involves the professionals and, in the case of the American Society of Safety Engineers (ASSP), includes the members. The second part of this cycle is when professionals come together to create intellectual property, while the final part of the cycle is professional development.

Accidental dust explosions pose a threat to people and property in industries that produce, process, handle or transport combustible dusts. Over the last century, the international research community has made significant progress towards better understanding of the dust explosion phenomenon. These efforts have contributed to the development of improved standards and best practice guidelines for safe design and operation of process facilities. Results obtained with advanced consequence models demonstrate the potential for applying such tools to the design and optimization of process facilities and equipment for explosion protection. It is foreseen that further development of numerical methods will include improved representation of particle-laden flows and combustion. It is essential that safety engineers acknowledge the inherent limitations and uncertainties associated with the collection of dust samples from industrial facilities, parameters determined in standardized tests, and the extrapolation of results from laboratory experiments to accidental explosion scenarios in industry. This paper reviews some of the practical aspects associated with risk assessments and risk management for dust explosions in the process industries, with emphasis on consequence modeling. The discussion outlines prospects for further development of test methods and simulation tools for industrial dust explosions, and provides recommendations for safety engineers and researchers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Collaborative efforts between the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) and the American Society of Safety Engineers (ASSE) led to a report focusing on overlapping occupational vulnerabilities, specifically small construction businesses employing young, non-native workers. Following the report, an online survey was conducted by ASSE with construction business representatives focusing on training experiences of non-native workers. Results were grouped by business size (50 or fewer employees or more than 50 employees). Smaller businesses were less likely to employ a supervisor who speaks the same language as immigrant workers (p < .001). Non-native workers in small businesses received fewer hours of both initial safety training (p = .005) and monthly ongoing safety training (p = .042). Immigrant workers in smaller businesses were less likely to receive every type of safety training identified in the survey (including pre-work safety orientation [p < .001], job-specific training [p < .001], OSHA 10-hour training [p = .001], and federal/state required training [p < .001]). The results highlight some of the challenges a vulnerable worker population faces in a small business, and can be used to better focus intervention efforts. Among businesses represented in this sample, there are deficits in the amount, frequency, and format of workplace safety and health training provided to non-native workers in smaller construction businesses compared to those in larger businesses. The types of training conducted for non-native workers in small business were less likely to take into account the language and literacy issues faced by these workers. The findings suggest the need for a targeted approach in providing occupational safety and health training to non-native workers employed by smaller construction businesses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on several aspects of protecting workers from risks related to release of hazardous energy on machines, equipment and processes in the U.S. It mentions need for employers to review hazardous energy control procedures periodically and several standards like the U.S. Occupational Safety & Health Administration (OSHA) 1989 and American Society of Safety Engineers (ASSE) 2016. It also mentions need for mobile equipment manufacturers to incorporate lockable battery cutoff.

The article discusess the role of occupational safety and health professionals in identifying, and assessing operational risks. Topics dicussed include guideline made under "American National Standards Institute/American Society of Safety Engineers Z690.2-2011, Risk Management Principles and Guidelines," on the same; impact of risk assessment in managing industrial safety; and impact of risk communication in managing operational risks.

Nowadays, fire safety engineers are increasingly relying on sophisticated numerical simulators, typically based on Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) solvers, to conduct their analyses. However, the complexity of these numerical models often limits drastically the number of simulations that can be afforded, making traditional methods of safety analysis difficult or impossible to apply. This paper proposes a statistical method to evaluate a quantity of interest with an expensive simulator while saving computation time. The method is based on Bayesian statistics and multi-fidelity. We use Gaussian process regression to construct a Bayesian model of the complex simulator. This model is based on a multi-fidelity approach, which consists in simulating at different levels of accuracy, for instance by varying the spatial discretization in a CFD solver. We illustrate the method on an example of fire safety analysis, where the quantity of interest is the probability of exceeding a tenability threshold in a building on fire. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Safety-critical systems are becoming more widespread, complex and reliant on software. Increasingly they are engineered through (COTS) (Commercial Off The Shelf) components to alleviate the spiralling costs and development time, often in the context of complex supply chains. A parallel increased concern for safety has resulted in a variety of safety standards, with a growing consensus that a safety life cycle is needed which is fully integrated with the design and development life cycle, to ensure that safety has appropriate influence on the design decisions as system development progresses. In this article we explore the application of an integrated approach to safety engineering in which assurance drives the engineering process. The paper reports on the outcome of a case study on a live industrial project with a view to evaluate: its suitability for application in a real-world safety engineering setting; its benefits and limitations in counteracting some of the difficulties of safety engineering with (COTS) components across supply chains; and, its effectiveness in generating evidence which can contribute directly to the construction of safety cases. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents an interview with a member of Women in Safety Engineering (WISE) of American Society of Safety Engineers (ASSE) Louise Valle. She presents her views on the mentor-ship program of WISE and Occupational Safety and Health (OSH) professionals. She also discusses the challenges faced by women at workplace.

The article offers information on the improving workplace safety and advancing profession. It further discusses about focusing on people, not performance; customizing how to express gratitude; mentors for the role in career and in professional and personal development; and opportunities to interact with so many people across organization and with clients.

The medical device sector has many international standards and guidance documents; it is also a very wide-ranging product sector. This article aims to suggest a strategy for assessing systems including either or both electronic hardware and software that utilizes some of the techniques introduced in the ISO 26262:2011 (ISO 2011) automotive functional safety standard. The reason for suggesting this approach is to recommend processes that will help improve and simplify the risk assessment and development activities of safety-relevant medical devices. The approach here is very much systems focused on, and relates to, medical devices that come under the remit of IEC 60601-1 (IEC 2012) and, hence, are defined as ME systems or ME equipment (devices transferring energy to or measuring energy from the patient). Here there are strong parallels with the functional safety strategy used in the automotive sector. Not all products are deemed to be ME systems or ME equipment, nor is IEC 60601-1 relevant for all medical devices; others may be, for example, in vitro or implantable devices. Not all software that falls under the remit of the software life-cycle standard IEC 62304 (IEC 2015) is relevant to IEC 60601-1; for example, standalone software can be a medical device (EC 2007; FDA 2005). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

ISO 26262-2 chapter 6.4.8 demands one or more functional safety audits during the execution of a safety-relevant automotive project. Also, all major original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) are requesting a suitable Automotive SPICE® level by their suppliers. And in January 2016, the Cybersecurity Guidebook for Cyber- Physical Vehicle Systems was published. To reduce the effort of audit and assessment activities a combination of an ASPICE ISO/ IEC 15504 assessment, a functional safety ISO audit, and a cybersecurity assessment is being elaborated by working parties of automotive suppliers and manufacturers in Europe, as well as in EU projects (Messnarz et al. 2013). This article describes a framework to extend the process assessment model (PAM) based on ISO 15504 (ASPICE) to meet the requirements of ISO 26262 for a functional safety audit and outlines the results of current work where the cybersecurity guidebook SAE J3061 (SAE 2016) will be integrated within 2016. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Driven by the rapidly increasing share of embedded automotive systems implementing functions for powertrain control, comfort, and driver assistance, the automotive industry has driven the establishment and deployment of standards for ensuring the quality of both the related products and the development processes. While Automotive SPICE (ASPICE) has been transforming the development processes of automotive embedded systems since 2003, the ISO 26262 standard has been applied to cover the integration of functional safety into these systems since 2011. This has become necessary, since an increasing number of automotive embedded systems are safety critical; that is, their malfunctioning might lead to hazards in particular situations. The next particular challenge automotive original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) and their suppliers are facing is cyberscurity, that is, the protection of vehicles and their highly networked electronics subsystems from IT security threats. This article gives a contribution to the OEMs' and suppliers' increasing efforts to achieve the integration of ASPICE, functional safety, and cybersecurity in their development processes. Building on their works aiming at the integration of ASPICE and functional safety published previously in SQP, the authors suggest methods to integrate cybersecurity considerations as well. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Prevention-through-design (PtD) is a new initiative to reduce occupational risks by developing lower-risk tools, equipment, methods, and materials. Once PtD innovations have been developed, the challenge is to have them adopted by industry. A theory-based intervention involving the creation of “technology champions” to improve construction firm adoption of a PtD innovation was developed, implemented, and tested. Technology Champions were created in firms through a methodology entitled “enhanced trialability.” In a controlled pre-test/post-test experimental design, firm decision-maker (n=40) readiness to adopt the PtD innovation was assessed using a validated survey instrument. Enhanced trialability was successful in producing technology champions. Also, gain-score t-test analysis found significant improvements in ‘innovation adoption readiness’ among firms with technology champions, when compared to firms with no technology champions (p = .01). This intervention can be used by future researchers and occupational safety and health practitioners to improve adoption of safety innovations. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

An interview with Mike Belcher, President at American Society of Safety Engineers (ASSE) and David Michaels, Assistant Secretary at the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) is presented. They discussed several issues including challenges to occupational safety management system, hiring of OSH professionals, and growth of small businesses.

The article discusses the improving safety measures in a region by building a safety community with professional development conference (PDC). Topics discussed include the use of safety resources provided by the American Society of Safety Engineers (ASSE), revenue collection with the help of vendors and sponsors, income from registration fees, and the significance of local PDC for community engagement.

The article focuses on need of occupational safety and health (OSH) professionals in managing all hazardous situations in the safety management processes. It discusses on comments on safety culture within an organization and offer reviews of job description of safety professionals, and also include resources with respect to safety professionals as culture change agents.

The article focuses on professional development in occupational safety and health (OSH) sector in the U.S. Topics discussed include one of the core value of American Society of Safety Engineers (ASSE) to protect people, property and the environment, use of the Code of Federal Regulations (CFR) to create safety programs in the U.S. and competencies required for OSH professionals for global safety practice.

The article offers information on industrial safety and industrial equipment protective measures created in collaborative work of Occupational Safety and Health (OSH) personnel and controls engineers in the U.S. Topics discussed include stratification of safety standards, safety function associated with machinery control systems called safety-related parts of the control system (SRP/CS) and a table depicting requirements for stop, emergency stop and protective stop requirements.

The article offers information related to election of the American Society of Safety Engineers (ASSE) and nominees for the members of the ASSE. It is stated that senior vice president is a critical position on the Society's Board of Directors, who serves a 1-year term, advancing to successive 1-year terms as ASSE president-elect and president, respectively. It is stated that the society has four councils and an elected vice president chairs each council.

The article focuses on steps take by the organization of the issue to increase member engagement and increase connections with our volunteer leaders and members. Topics discussed include board representation to bring together chapter leaders within each region; regular Congress of Councils meetings to bring together council vice presidents; and the launch of virtual Board Connection Series.

Atrium is popular element in mercantile buildings, covered shopping mall, airport terminals, and sport arenas. In the event of a fire, these buildings overwhelmingly necessitate the use of a mechanical ventilation system to provide conditions to achieve safe escape route for the building occupants. This manuscript deals with mechanical ventilation system, manual method for the hydraulic calculations and fire design scenarios. This research shows an overview of the Consolidated Model of Fire and Smoke Transport (CFAST) modeling that using to predict ventilation performance and smoke movement in an atrium. CFAST software has many uses in a wide variety of buildings and fire scenarios due to fast, reliable and affective accuracy of output data. In addition CFAST approaches provide a link between outside building weather conditions and fire and smoke development. This paper demonstrated the complete design procedure as an example to fire safety engineer. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article offers information on the approval of ANSI/ASSE Z590.3, Prevention Through Design (PTD): Guidelines for Addressing Occupational Risks in Design and Redesign Processes, by the American Society of Safety Engineers (ASSE). It mentions that hazard analysis and risk assessment require an organization to ask several key questions. Also includes statement of David W. Wilbanks, corporate safety officer with the Gerdau Long Steel North America.

The aim of this study was to investigate safety climate and how it relates to the safety performance of employees from the perspective of safety engineers. Using Griffin and Neal's (2000) safety climate model as a theoretical basis, we hypothesized that the organizational safety climate is a higher-order construct that relates to the safety compliance of employees and their safety participation via the mediating roles of safety knowledge and safety motivation. Hypotheses were tested among 236 safety engineers working in the wood and metal-processing industries in Austria. Structural equation modeling (SEM) analysis showed that safety climate is a higher-order construct comprising manager values, safety communication, safety practices, safety training, and safety equipment. Moreover, from the perspective of safety engineers, the safety climate of the organizations was related to employee safety motivation, which in turn related to their safety compliance and safety participation. In contrast to our assumptions, the safety knowledge of employees was, in the view of safety engineers, neither related to employee safety compliance nor to their safety participation. Multigroup analysis revealed no differences between internally and externally employed safety engineers for these relations. Thus, although the safety climate model was generally confirmed from an engineer's perspective, engineers rated motivational aspects of safety climate is more important compared to knowledge aspects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article offers information on nominations for various posts for the 2015 American Society of Safety Engineers (ASSE) Election. These nominations include Rixio Medina and James D. Smith for Board of Directors, James Thornton and Christine Sullivan for Council Vice-Presidents, and Jay Jamali and Steven Gray for Regional Vice-Presidents. It also mentions nominations for Area Directors including Lance Roux and Karen Metz.

This paper determines and studies, analyzes and elaborates and classifies and categorizes the main qualitative techniques for hazards identification and assessment in chemical industrial processes. It specifies that these techniques base their effectiveness both, on analytical estimation processes and on the safety managers-engineers ability. It enumerates also those that present a bigger use frequency as well as the dangers that identify and the results that they give. Their use is linked, in function of the complexity level of the analysis technique, with the different stages of the life of industrial projects / processes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents the proven solutions to improve occupational safety as of late 2014, particularly the prevention through design (PTD) scheme. It cites the report by the Australian Safety and Compensation Council on the effects of machinery and equipment design on cases of work-related deaths and injuries and the position by the American Society of Safety Engineers (ASSE) on PTD or designing for safety (DFS). Also cited are the four key stages of occupational risk management.

The article presents the 2017 American Society of Safety Engineers (ASSE) elections. The senior vice president is a critical position on the board of directors of the Society and serves a one-year term and oversees the council vice presidents' functions. The Society has four councils which include Region Affairs, Professional Development, Professional Affairs and Practices and Standards. The candidates for the senior vice president include Deborah R. Roy, Diana M. Stegall and Carl W. Heinlein.

The article notes the increasing emphasis corporations are placing on sustainability and considers the role of health and safety professionals in promoting it as suggested by two surveys conducted among them in 2010 and 2011. Consumer issues, labor practices, and organizational governance were among areas where respondents believed they were well-positioned to play a major role.

The number of road tunnels in Europe has increased rapidly over the last years. Nevertheless, this increasing number is raising upfront an endogenous problem, which is the severity of accidents that may occur. After the spate of tunnel fires in Europe over the past decade, the European Commission embarked upon a major review of road tunnel safety and launched the Directive 2004/54/EC that sets minimum safety requirements and suggests, apart from the measures imposed based on tunnel characteristics, the implementation of a risk assessment in several cases. As a result, many risk assessment methods have been proposed worldwide, most of them based on quantitative risk assessment (QRA) models. Although QRAs are helpful to address physical aspects and facilities of the infrastructures, current approaches in the road tunnel field have several challenges to meet in order to provide decision-makers with the overall risk picture. Taking into account that QRAs are progressively becoming the selected method to manage tunnel safety and risk, this paper’s purpose is twofold. On the one hand, it aims to inform safety managers and engineers about items which are not adequately handled by current road tunnel QRA models. On the other hand, it aims to suggest potential areas in which improvements should be made. Taking into consideration the challenges and the limitations discussed herein, this paper concludes that QRA models should not be the single criterion for the safety assessment process of these critical infrastructures. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article discusses the role of employees in organization's safety measures. Topics include the role of fitting people into safety systems or creating systems to fit people, safety engineering's focus on people as a problem to control, and the recommendation for organizations to create a balance between bureaucratically controlled safety and worker-managed safety.

The article presents information on companies' use of safety control systems. Topics include the role of audits of machinery in reviewing safety control systems, the role of safety professionals in using control systems to guide safety decisions, and details on the International Organization for Standardization (ISO).

The article discusses occupational health and safety management systems (OHSMS), focusing on a comparison of the differences between various systems in order to help safety engineers choose one to implement. Topics include the definition of a system and examples of OHSMS such as ANSI/AIHA/ASSE Z10 and OHSAS 18001, the difference between and OHSMS and a traditional program approach to safety management, and research into systems' effectiveness when implemented.

The article discusses mobile tablet application technology for Safety, Health, and Environmental (SH&E) professionals. The author suggests such devices can be useful in the field, improve efficiency, and provide a return on the initial investment. Various uses and specific application recommendations are made.

The article focuses on methods of safety management that may be perceived as bullying despite no intention to cause harm. Characteristics of bullying are presented and unintentional examples are provided, along with recommendations on how to avoid such situations and ideas for alternative management strategies.