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Issued: February 2004

SUMMARY

Solid Waste Services has made significant improvements in safety program management and performance since 2001. When the original Employee Safety audit was issued in 2001, SWS had considerable work to do to strengthen their safety program and performance. Since that time, management has documented and communicated goals, strategies, and roles for safety throughout the department, and has supported the department’s safety team in their initiatives. The safety team has greatly improved the frequency and scope of workplace inspections, has improved the quality of safety data, its analysis and distribution. They have also implemented tracking systems that measure some accountability processes within operations, namely the implementation of corrective actions following injury incidents, and the remediation of problems identified in routine inspections. Furthermore, the first in a series of standard operating procedures have been ratified since the last audit. A measurable and significant reduction since 2001 in the frequency of lost-time (severe) injuries can be attributed to improvements in safety management.

Of the nine original recommendations reviewed, we found five fully implemented, while efforts are underway in all areas to achieve the spirit of the recommendations. In 2002, the State required SWS management to introduce a number of measures that coincided with OCA recommendations. Upper management defined strategies and roles for safety management throughout the department. The department’s safety team, with management’s support, further improved or introduced detective, preventive, and corrective processes. It is in the operations areas themselves where implementation of OCA recommendations has yet to be realized. For example, although the director has ratified several new standard operating procedures, evidence shows supervisors have yet to adopt these as tools to hold operators accountable when they are witnessed violating procedures. Similarly, while roles are widely communicated, more specific expectations for roles in accountability procedures, such as taking corrective actions following an injury, documentation of violations, and the use of counseling or written reprimands, are unclear and inconsistent. Implementation is achieved when each level of the organization is integrated into the safety management system.

Lack of accountability enforcement procedures in the field remains the key barrier to SWS achieving competitive safety performance in the waste industry. In our audit work, we found that day-to-day procedures for ensuring accountability in the three high-hazard operating divisions need to be strengthened. Supervisors report widely varying approaches to holding workers accountable when they violate procedures. In this way, standard operating procedures have yet to be effectively integrated as tools. A disciplinary policy that can guide supervisors in holding crews accountable for working safely at all times became effective July 2003. However, the supervisors and operators that we spoke to are unaware or unclear about when and how to apply such a policy.

Analysis of injury data bears out the finding that operators are not being held accountable. According to SWS Safety Office data, imprecise execution of highly physical work, combined with employee negligence, and a failure to follow procedures have led to the majority of injuries in the department over the last three years.

Click here to go to our audit request form to request a hard copy of this report (Report No. AU03202) or download the entire text of the Employee Safety: Solid Waste Services Follow-Up Report (Size: 377 KB) in Adobe Acrobat. Click here to view original audit report issued in April 2001. You will need Adobe's Acrobat Reader to view these files.

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