Occupational Risk Prevention and Management in the Workplace

Management of the Prevention of Risks in the Enterprise

Management has changed throughout history with the changes in the ways of understanding work and has influenced such important factors as:

• The economic cost of damage and injury accidents.
• The industrial action of the union movement.

Remember that the management of risk prevention should be characterized as scientific, interdisciplinary, comprehensive, integrated, and participatory. The obligation of any manager is to manage resources, both material and human, for economic and social benefits, so they generate satisfactory working conditions.

Methods to Assess Occupational Risks

These methods allow to assess and rank their degree of danger, to facilitate its correction. Some methods, such as the Lest Renault method, give guidelines for the analysis of working conditions and to categorize the factors that may affect the health of workers. In contrast, the William T. Fine method assesses the severity of the risks through its degree of danger.

William T. Fine Method

We define the degree of danger as the product of three factors:

GP = C * E * P

Numerical values are assigned to each factor, according to Table 2.1.

• Consequence (C): These are the most likely outcome of an accident, according to the risk which is set: 1 for small losses, 50 in the case of one or more deaths.
• Exposure (E): It considers the frequency with which the situation presents a risk. 0.5 for remotely possible situations, and 10 if it occurs constantly.
• Probability (P): This factor considers the likelihood that the accident sequence is completed once begun. Value 0.5 if it never happened but it may happen, and 10 if the result is expected and likely more.

The Fine method incorporates, once the evaluation of consequences, exposure, and probability has been conducted, the degree of justification (J) of the corrective action proposal as:

J = GP / (FC * GC)

• Cost Factor (FC): The quantification of 0.5 to 10 of the cost estimate for corrective action.
• Degree of Correction (GC): The extent to which risk is reduced by the action of the proposed measure. Ranging from 1 if it eliminates the risk by 100%, and 6 if it eliminates the risk below 25%.

To determine whether corrective actions are technically and economically justified, the value of J must be over 10.