Allocating safety responsibilities Responsibilities

for ESM should be allocated from the top of the organisation downwards. The senior manager in an organisation or department appoints the Heads of Safety and assigns responsibilities to them. The senior manager should also assign safety responsibilities to the Line Managers. In turn, the Line Managers may assign Project Managers to a project, or staff directly to tasks.

It is essential that safety roles and responsibilities are clearly defined and documented. The responsibilities assigned to individuals should be explicit and understood by everyone in the organisation. In this respect, they should be documented and made freely available within the organisation. The documentation should identify:

• the various organisational positions;

• the associated responsibilities and authorities for ESM; and

• the communication and reporting channels.

Safety roles and responsibilities should be put in writing. When someone is proposed for safety-related work, they should be given a task description, detailing their specific responsibilities, the authority that they will carry, and their lines of reporting. They should confirm that they understand and accept the task description before their assignment is confirmed. There should be some form of organisational structure chart available to all employees, containing details of the organisation’s safety roles.

The definition of safety responsibilities should be periodically reviewed. You will need to make sure that everyone within your organisation who is given safety responsibility clearly understands the extent of that safety responsibility. This understanding should start at staff induction and be developed throughout their career, for every person. In some cases, responsibility may be limited to working in accordance with a work plan and reporting defects and deviations to someone else. In other cases, safety responsibility will include deciding what actions you are going to take to improve safety or prevent a reduction in safety.