Third party safety audits, which we have discussed before, are a vital part of your safety plan. Not only do they meet the requirements for third party auditing set forth by OSHA in a number of their standards, they also help you ensure you are operationally sound. Safety is fluid; what was up to code last month may no longer be acceptable. Because of this, it is easy to maintain your safety plan, which was properly set up, but find yourself in trouble simply because of policy changes.

Regular safety audits will help you to ensure you are running an effective safety program in your business. Trained auditors can ensure that your policies  and procedures conform to OSHA standards, and that they are the most cost effective way to ensure safety in any given situation. They will begin by reviewing your known hazards, then evaluate your current plan to handle them. After this, they will examine your place of business and worksite practices, to make sure there are no additional hazards which need to be addressed. Auditors will also examine all signage, to make certain it meets minimum requirements for acceptability.

If there are any issues in these basic areas of your business, your auditors will help you come up with a plan to correct them. From there, they will examine your safety plan further, picking apart your processes in the same way an OSHA auditor would. If you have not had an audit recently, or if you are afraid some of the recent OSHA changes affect you, please contact us, so that we can help. If you have anything to add about third party safety audits, please leave a comment.