Description:

This is a comprehensive and thorough course. There is no more important skill to the safety professional than the ability to discover and remedy hazards before they can injure workers. This is the purpose of the workplace safety auditor and his & her three primary tools: Hazard Analysis, Inspections, and Accident Investigation. The purpose of a workplace safety audit is to discover circumstances, situations, equipment, or materials that may harm a person. The objective is not regulatory compliance, and it is not saving money, it is the avoidance of human injury. Regulatory compliance and monetary gain are collateral benefits, not the primary objective.

It is a certainty that accidents cost money. They cost money in medical expenses, insurance, lost work, and a variety of indirect costs. Regulatory compliance is also an important part of ensuring a safe workplace. But there is not a regulation to cover every hazard. In fact, OSHA addresses this issue by citing the General Duty Clause when no specific standard applies to a situation that could injure a worker. The General Duty Clause states, "Each employer shall furnish to each of his employees, employment and a place of employment which are free from recognized hazards that are causing or are likely to cause death or serious physical harm to his employees."

Rather than an auditor in the sense of a financial auditor, consider yourself an investigator in the sense of a detective who is carefully searching for clues that indicate potential injury scenarios. But, no matter how thorough you are in discovering hazards, that's only the first step. Be sure that the hazards you discover are remedied in a timely fashion. For every hazard you discover, you must first attempt to eliminate the hazard through Engineering Controls. If the hazard cannot be remedied by Engineering Controls, then you must attempt to eliminate or control it through Administrative Controls. Only if it can not be controlled by Engineering Controls or Administrative Controls may you use PPE as the remedy.

Above all, remember that people will retain or lose life and limb based upon how well you perform the safety audit function. The required amount of time to complete the course is dependent upon your knowledge of workplace safety, but we find that the average completion time is approximately 24 hours. You have up to six months to complete the course.

Upon successful completion of this topic, the student will have the knowledge, skills and abilities to:

• Understand and recognize the sequence of events that leads up to an accident.
• Know why incidents may not get reported and how to change a non-reporting culture.
• Write a comprehensive incident investigation program.
• Lead an incident investigation and apply the 4-step incident investigation process.
• Gather information pertinent to root cause analysis.
• Determine root cause through various techniques.
• Recommend and implement corrective actions to prevent similar future incidents
• Write an incident report.
• Recognize hazardous conditions in the workplace.
• Disseminate the types of injuries that can occur as consequences to hazardous conditions.
• Understand the Hierarchy of Hazard Control Measures and when to use them.
• Conduct a Job Hazard Analysis by using the six-step process.
• Calculate risk based on frequency, likelihood, and severity of hazards.
• Apply the concept of Acceptable Risk to the Residual Risk Reduction method of reducing hazardous conditions.
• Prioritize high-risk tasks to pro-actively eliminate hazardous conditions before they become injuries or illnesses.
• Understand the process hazard analysis method and apply its common techniques of What-If and HAZOP in the evaluation of processes with highly hazardous chemicals.

Prerequisites:

The Safety Auditor Certificate (SAC) Course is a foundational course that requires no prerequisites.

Continuing Education Units:

(2.40) CEUs are offered for this course. As an IACET Accredited Provider, NASP offers IACET CEUs for its learning events that comply with the ANSI/IACET Continuing Education and Training Standard. CEUs will be reflected on the Certificate upon successful completion of the course and passing the exam. Partial credit or adjusted CEUs will not be awarded for individuals who do not successfully meet the criteria for achievement of CEUs.

Online Exams:

The student will take a comprehensive online exam at the end of the course. You must score 80% to receive certification. You have two opportunities to pass each exam.

Recertification:

A refresher course and exam will be required every three (3) years. The cost of this recertification is $195.

Non-discrimination Policy:

NASP is committed to maintaining a work and learning environment free of all forms of discrimination. View the full document here.

Proprietary Interest Disclosure:

The instructor(s) has no financial interest in any course documents, products, tools, or instruments. View the full document here.