In the May 2014 issue of Professional Safety, a publication of the American Society of Safety Engineers, Joel M. Haight, Patrick Yorio, Kristen A. Rost and Dana R. Willmer recognize that occupational health and safety management systems (OHSMS) have become popular as agencies such as the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) expect to propose regulations and as consensus standards and industry programs such as CORESafety are implemented.

In brief:

Occupational health and safety management systems (OHSMS) are receiving much attention in the safety community and among regulators and consensus industry groups.

Few differences exist between individual systems, but significant differences exist in their implementation. Differences also exist between the OHSMS approach and the traditional safety program approach.

If a company elects to implement an OHSMS, the challenge is not deciding which one to use; rather, it is implementing the many policies, processes, intervention initiatives and activities and protocols that make up the specific system used, then measuring its effectiveness.

The full article can be seen here.

At its 2014 Annual Meeting, the Society for Mining Metallurgy and Exploration endorsed the CORESafety initiative and will continue to publish information about the CORESafety modules at this website and at the SME hompage.