Properly managed Third Party Safety Audits can be the difference between a smooth OSHA visit and a disaster. During a safety audit, a certified audit team will provide an independent review of your operations, create a list of best practice recommendations, and form an Action Plan for your company to reach full compliance. In addition, any audits performed by a certified company will comply with all relevant federal and state health inspection requirements.
A third party safety audit is great for customers with a number of different needs. A third party safety audit can help you to: develop an elite safety program, obtain VPP Star/Merit status, comply with your OHSAS 18001 procedures of assessing regulatory compliance, validate compliance, and a number of other things. While this list is hardly all inclusive, it gives a good idea of the scope of a safety audit.
The reason a safety audit can help customers with so many different needs is that a good third party safety audit will cover a multitude of areas. First and foremost, the safety audit will review any hazardous assessments for specific health and safety programs. This will ensure that your company is properly handling all known hazardous assessments as per the latest OSHA and state standards. Next, an audit team will conduct a complete “wall to wall” safety inspection. This will help your company to find areas of non-compliance, so that you can fix the issues before someone gets hurt unnecessarily. Then, the auditors should review all accident investigations, in an effort to identify areas of potential concern and to fix any problem areas. Finally, an audit team should review employee involvement and safety training, to ensure that the entire team understands their role in keeping the workplace safe.
With all of this data, an audit company can then create an Action Plan to bring your facility up to code. In addition, as per OSHA policy, this Action Plan can be used, should OSHA come to investigate your facility, as a show of good faith, and help you to avoid citations for any incidents found during the audit which you are in the process of fixing.
PFSafety has a certified team of professionals who will ensure that your business is up to code. If you are ready to get serious about safety, contact us so that we can begin developing your audit plan today.
