ABSTRACT
Inspection is a common element of safetymanagement systems, controlling hazards by early detection and correction. As has been widely recognized, accidental injury data can only be collected after injuries occur, and valid analysis is difficult because they are statistically rare events (Woodcock 1989). In contrast, safety inspections identify required corrections as well as appraising the extent to which safety is compromised. Inspection is a part of internal safety management systems as well as external or enforcement systems. Although seemingly a ubiquitous practice, the safety science literature does not
discuss human factors affecting inspection performance. A literature search of an electronic database comprising human factors, ergonomics, psychology, and safety science literature 2000-2007 for “safety+ inspection” found few papers relevant to safety inspection, none addressing inspector performance. Most of the literature about safety inspection is normative, for instance, that safety inspection performed a certain way predicts program-level safety outcomes such as injuries (Laitinen et al., 1999). Occupational safety textbooks describe inspection as though the actual search
and assessment of defects is self-evident. The emphasis is on the need to plan the inspection, incorporating information about prior accidents, a review of operations and potential accidents, the hazard-identification input of workers, and applicable standards (Reich 1986, Mansdorf 1993).While texts commonly describe principles and standards related to a variety of hazard types, the implication is that the inspector
will intuitively know how to identify and correctly assess those hazards when encountered. Expectations for safety inspection are high. Public discourse about safety
inspection reflects the expectation that inspectors will detect anything unsafe and the perception that the task is simple. For instance, at the time of writing, a propane handing facility had recently exploded in Toronto Canada, temporarily displacing over 10 000 local residents from their homes and dispersing asbestos contamination. Despite the size of the industry and the small rate of safety failures, the media and public rush to judgement disparaged the overseeing agency. Politicians supported this position by pointing out “hazards” at approved sites. Although the purported “hazards” were mostly cosmetic, the exercise suggests a perception that safety inspection is an intuitively obvious process requiring little more than diligence. This paper focuses on third-party inspection as performed in many settings
including occupational health and safety, public health, and technical standards inspection. While inspectors often examine or recommend management systems such as training, policies and procedures, the purpose of those management systems elements is to achieve some physical safety through physical conditions or execution of particular behaviours. This paper therefore focuses on inspection of conditions and operation, as this verifies the fulfilment of the management-system intentions as well as the achievement of safety objectives.
