Consultancy for Controlling Hazardous and Harmful Workplace Factors

To help businesses control hazardous and harmful factors at work, ITVC Global provides consultancy for controlling hazardous and harmful workplace factors .

Scope of the service

1. Establish the occupational safety team and define responsibilities

2. Identify hazardous and harmful workplace factors

• Analyse working conditions, relevant work processes and workplace inspection results.
• Consult workers about factors that could cause injury, illness or deterioration in their health at work.
• Where observation alone cannot identify or assess factors fully and accurately, use appropriate instruments to measure and check them. Prepare occupational hygiene records for harmful exposures and support occupational-disease prevention.

3. Set objectives and preventive measures

• Based on the identified and assessed factors, ITVC helps the business set objectives and appropriate preventive measures, following these priorities:
  • Eliminate hazardous and harmful factors at the design stage when selecting buildings, technology, equipment and materials.
  • Prevent or limit exposure and reduce harm through engineering controls and organisational or administrative measures: information, awareness, occupational safety and health training, safe-work rules and procedures, worker protection and healthcare, and management of equipment, materials and substances subject to strict safety requirements.
• Specify the time, location and resources needed to implement the objectives and measures.

4. Implement measures and evaluate their effectiveness

• Help the business instruct workers in measures for preventing hazardous and harmful workplace exposures.
• Support planning and inspection of the effectiveness of preventive measures at least once a year, as described in Article 7 of Decree 39/2016/ND-CP. For production and business establishments, inspections extend to teams, groups and workshops.
• The inspection covers:
  • The occupational safety and hygiene condition of machinery, equipment, buildings, warehouses and workplaces.
  • The use and storage of personal protective equipment, firefighting equipment, essential medicines and on-site first-aid and emergency supplies.
  • Management and use of machinery, equipment, materials and substances subject to strict occupational safety and health requirements.
  • Workers’ knowledge and ability to respond to incidents and emergencies.
  • Implementation of worker-protection and occupational-healthcare arrangements.
  • Implementation of recommendations arising from occupational safety and health inspections and workplace accident investigations.
• Evaluation of effectiveness covers:
  • How preventive measures have been organised and implemented.
  • The resulting improvements in working conditions.

5. Prepare for serious technical incidents and emergencies

• Develop arrangements for responding to technical incidents that could seriously affect occupational safety and health, including:
  • An on-site response team with each member’s responsibilities, and support available from nearby establishments.
  • Technical resources required by sector-specific legislation and instruments needed during the response. Relevant instruments must be inspected or calibrated as required by measurement legislation.
  • The response method and sequence of actions.
• Approve the response plan or submit it to the competent authority for approval, as applicable, and organise periodic exercises in accordance with sector-specific requirements.
• Promptly notify the local authorities when a serious technical incident affecting occupational safety and health occurs.

References

Decree 39/2016/ND-CP — national legal database