ABSTRACT
Taking responsibility for the implementation of a health and safety strategy involves managing numerous different details which are supported by three key drivers: theory, the law, and recognized acceptable industry practice. Much of health and safety theory aligns with quality assurance theory. In both cases, success tends to be measured by the avoidance of failures. It is instructive to look at a range of typical high-level commercial decisions that are regularly made, often without consultation to operational managers or other specialists such as health and safety, quality, and engineering. It is a fact of life that organizations, now and again, have to reduce the numbers of employees purely to bring their costs into line with, for example, reduced turnover. Maintenance can be the Cinderella role of an organization because the merits of the work often go largely unrecognized. Production outputs can often be accelerated by introducing extra shifts of work, usually at weekends or at night.
