When creating a safety management system, it is quite obvious that in today's reality, an HSE specialist must possess more than just fundamental knowledge of safety rules and requirements; they must also be psychologically prepared to respond to changes and be able to identify, and even anticipate, risks.
It can be said with absolute certainty that an inspection specialist must be competent, articulate, intuitive, and observant in order to build a chain of cause-and-effect relationships. They must be tactful — able to listen and hear — as well as insightful, seeing the potential consequences of actions.
In short, after graduating with a degree in "Technosphere Safety," a specialist still has much to learn. An experienced worker with a long tenure, whose tasks previously involved performing inspections and issuing citations, must also change their attitude toward their duties. After all, the main work is not in the citation itself, but in "digging down" with the workers to understand why violations occurred and why the prerequisites for violations were not eliminated at the self-control level.
One way or another, everything must be done now to eliminate working with risks, root out the concept of "we've always done it this way," and instill approaches of self-control and critical assessment.
When hiring personnel for the HSE department, I see, understand, and plan training on objective approach skills, analysis, and the identification of root and contributing causes, as well as the development of corrective and preventive measures. It is very important to explain the essence of each action to the specialist.
For a comprehensive approach to specialist training, I use targeted inspections — checks focused on a single area requiring concentrated attention. In this process, it is important to clearly define which points need to be tracked, what can be done via remote access, and what must be assessed on-site. For example, "Organization of work under work permits."
The source material for the inspection consists of previous results, which identified weak points and defined strengths. These are used to form the inspection program and the scope of the departments to be checked.
Next, it is important to create a checklist for monitoring. We use checklists with pre-formulated deficiencies, which helps to quickly identify problem areas later. For example, the inspection direction in the program might be: "Issuance of a work permit, ensuring the completeness of safety measures." In the checklist for the inspector, we formulate the deficiency: "safety measures for workplace preparation are incomplete/not defined/incorrectly defined." We then provide a set of actions: valves not specified, safety signs not specified, fencing conditions not defined, etc. During the inspection, the inspector only needs to underline the relevant item and indicate the location or object of the check.
A similar approach is used for safety measures during the work itself. Either way, the inspector's main task, using the checklist, is to verify the entire work permit algorithm — from issuance to completion — and record the observations in the checklist without spending much time on writing.
When forming the observation results, it is necessary to work with the employees to understand why the identified issues were not eliminated during the preparation stage and to perform a probabilistic risk assessment with them. During joint discussions, it is necessary to get to the bottom of not only "why did this happen?" and "what needs to be done now?" but also "how should it be done in the future?" These answers to the three mandatory questions must be found with the help of the person performing the work.
Next, we teach HSE specialists to identify problem areas based on inspection results, determining the areas with the highest number of observations and considering their risk levels. In essence, it is through working on-site and communicating with personnel that root causes are established, contributing aspects emerge, and — most importantly — the necessary steps and corrective measures are formed.
The inspection should conclude with proposals for developing preventive measures. Here, the question arises: what disciplinary or corrective measures should be applied to personnel? I am deeply convinced that communication, explanation, training, and subsequently involving violators in cross-inspections is the most effective method. Additionally, follow-up control must be systematic.
Thus, a single inspection provides HSE specialists with the skill of forming approaches for inspection preparation, developing checklists with detailed control tasks, working with big data, communicating and establishing root causes, and forming necessary preventive measures. It is very important to learn how to overcome stereotypical habits and "that's not my job" approaches, starting with oneself and realizing: if not me, then who?