Implementation of a Health and Safety Management System in Compliance with OHSAS 18001: the Experience of Parcs i Jardins of Barcelona, Institut Municipal

Llimona Bonfill, Josep

Health and Safety Department / Labour Relations Area / Parcs i Jardins de Barcelona I.M. / Barcelona City Council / Tarragona 141 / 08014 Barcelona, Spain+34 93 413 25 07 / jllimona@bcn.cat

Luque Moreno, Pere

Labour Relations Area Responsible / Parcs i Jardins de Barcelona, I.M. / Barcelona City Council / Tarragona, 173 / 08014 Barcelona, Spain+34 93 413 25 06 / pluque@bcn.cat

Medina Gené, Alfred

Human Resources Director / Parcs i Jardins de Barcelona, I.M. / Barcelona City Council / Tarragona, 173 / 08014 Barcelona, Spain+34 93 413 24 09 / amedinag@bcn.cat

ABSTRACT

ABSTRACT

Parcs i Jardins (Parks and Gardens) of Barcelona, Institut Municipal, has designed and implemented an occupational Health and Safety Management System in compliance with OHSAS 18001. Parcs i Jardins is a public body reporting to Barcelona City Council with responsibility for the maintenance of Barcelona green spaces and trees. It has 1000 employees, 80% of whom performs physically-demanding gardening tasks.

The present paper details the implementation and certification stages, defines partial and final objectives, mentions difficulties encountered in each phase and draws conclusions from internal and certification audits.

Keywords

Keywords

Public company, OHSAS 18001, Management System, Audit

INTRODUCTION

INTRODUCTION

As much of the management of Barcelona green spaces, tress and beaches has been certified in accordance with ISO 14001 by Parcs i Jardins, the Institut thought it necessary to manage occupational risk prevention in a similar fashion.

The selected method was OHSAS 18001:1999 since this system is worldwide used, among other reasons because of its structural parallelism with ISO 9001 (quality management) and ISO 14001 (environmental management), thus allowing the integration of systems.

Preliminary information

General company data, namely staff characteristics, work centres, vehicles and machinery, are specified below.

Parcs i Jardins structure

Parcs i Jardins is a public body reporting to Barcelona City Council and included in the Environmental Area, together with the Urban Service and Maintenance Sectors and the Energy Agency.

The structure is defined as follows:

- Board of Directors, constituted by Management and Assistant Directors of Communication and Participation, Human Resources, Technology and Preservation.

- Area manager (of Barcelona districts and management areas)

- Head of department

- Person responsible for several squads within each area)

- Squad chief

- Squad staff

Figure 1. Organisation chart of Parcs i Jardins (at the time of the system implementation)

Staff

In 2007, Parcs i Jardins de Barcelona, Institut Municipal had a permanent workforce of 892 employees. The proportion between male and female staff as well as distribution by age, sex, and assigned tasks is shown in the following table:

Table 1: Staff distribution

Work centres

Parcs i Jardins de Barcelona, Institut Municipal, has over 80 work centres where employees begin and end their daily working day. Maintenance of green spaces is organised by gardening squads, i.e. small working groups that may have their own work centre.

Each of these centres, which can be found all over Barcelona, consists of a changing room, a tool store and a garage where the vehicle assigned to the squad can be serviced.

The centre distribution is as follows:

- 4 large work centres (each of which has over 100 workers)

- 4 medium-sized centres

- 75 gardening sheds

Each area manager is also responsible for the maintenance of the centre. In this sense, money is invested in the maintenance and improvement of facilities every year.

Vehicles and machinery

Parcs i Jardins has a large vehicle fleet and a wide range of machinery. A continuous maintenance and renewal plan ensures optimal functioning of the above.

Table 2. Vehicle fleet and machinery

Importance of occupational risk prevention

The protection of Parcs i Jardins staff’s health is one of the organisation’s strategic objectives.

The organisation believes that working well is as important as working safely. In fact, it is a two-sided coin: well done work without risks. It is Parcs i Jardins’ duty to ensure the quality of Barcelona green spaces; however, training in gardening skills is not enough. Both the Institut and staff must adopt a prevention culture. To this end, the Institut must provide the means to avoid risks and staff must use these means and actively participate in prevention programmes.

With this conviction in mind, Parcs i Jardins aims to ensure safe and healthy work conditions. The following are examples of this approach: the Manual of Occupational Risk Prevention in Gardening, Occupational Health and Safety Policy and Implementation of an Occupational Health and Safety Management System in compliance with OHSAS 18001:1999.

Manual of Occupational Risk Prevention in Gardening

Staff training and information is one of the most effective tools against occupational injuries. In this direction, Parcs i Jardins has created and published a manual with practical and graphic descriptions of preventive measures to be applied at work.

Figure 2. Details of the Manual of Occupational Risk Prevention in Gardening

OBJECTIVES

The objectives to be achieved by implementing and certifying the management system were identified and defined as:

- Sorting available documents regarding occupational health and safety in Parcs i Jardins.

- Implementing a management system for future integration of health and safety management with environment and quality management.

IMPLEMENTATION PROCESS

The implementation process began in January 2006. An external audit firm (NOVOTEC) provided guidance throughout the process.

The implementation stages are shown in the following table:

Table 3. Implementation stages of the management system OHSAS 18001 in Parcs i Jardins

1. First stage: initial assessment

As advised by the audit firm, the Health and Safety Department had to assess prevention at the Institut.

After compilation of all available documents, it was concluded that there was much literature, protocols of specific works and instructions but little control or register of actions, protocols, etc. For example, health and safety measures were taken but not recorded or valid protocols were available but had not been properly disseminated.

The goal of this phase is to sort available documents in order to detect management gaps and/or non-compliances with laws and regulations.

2. Second stage: definition of policy, objectives and programmes

In this phase, objectives to be met during the first year of implementation of the management system are defined.

Effective implementation of the management system requires drawing up a health and safety policy by Management including the organisation’s concerns regarding occupational risk prevention. In the particular case of Parcs i Jardins, the prevention policy has been signed by Management and the President, thus revealing board involvement in the issue. Annex 1 is a copy of the original prevention policy, with a Catalan translation, where agreements on health and safety issues are specified.

As far as objectives are concerned, these are not easily achieved during the first year due to immaturity of the system, but are still necessary to define annual preventive strategies and programmes.

In 2006 the objectives were:

1- To achieve a 5% reduction in the injury rate. This will be a permanent objective.

2- To record the implementation of corrective measures following the assessment of risks associated with buildings and activities.

3- Approval of work protocols. A series of actions were defined:

1- In order to reduce the injury rate, information and training campaigns were launched to raise awareness among managers and staff.

2- A thorough follow-up was designed to record all corrective measures.

3- Several manuals were created: Risk prevention in gardening, Pruning and climbing techniques, Application of phytosanitary products, Basic guidelines for vehicle use, etc.

At the same time, a training plan starting with a basic course on risk prevention and addressed to all area managers was initiated. Furthermore, two campaigns for the improvement of staff health, i.e. giving up smoking and giving up alcohol, were launched.

3. Third stage: drawing up documents

Apart from the implementation stage, this is the most time-consuming phase.

In this stage, documents which meet the Institut’s needs are drawn up in compliance with current legislation and OHSAS 18001. The duties and relationships among actors are also specified at this point.

The main premise for the implementation of a management system is to use available documents and avoid creating new ones. In this way, the implementation runs smoothly and naturally.

The following table shows the procedures, work instructions and registers of the management system (on the date of publication of this paper):

Table 4. Structure of documents related to the Health and Safety Management System of Parcs i Jardins (at the present date)

In this phase documents and ways of working in Parcs i Jardins had to be collected, sorted out and contrasted with and adapted to OHSAS 18001.

Using the available ways of working (provided they are well defined) is interesting because it facilitates the system implementation (the following stage) since no new duties need to be assigned to groups performing management tasks.

Note: The Health and Safety Management System, which is in accordance with OHSAS 18001 complies with current legislation. Legislation is periodically revised to adapt the documents.

4. Fourth and fifth stages: implementation and training

The implementation stage must guarantee the efficacy of the management system. To this end, all organisation members must be acquainted with related documents.

The fourth and fifth phases took place simultaneously since, apart from making known the system, training on the nature of the system and duties and assigned tasks must be provided.

The documents were spread in two ways:

- All staff members were given a paper copy of the manual, procedures, work instructions and registers affecting them.

- A copy was published in the intranet. Valid, updated documents can be found in the intranet only. Other copies cannot be controlled; it is the employee’s responsibility to make sure he/she has the latest version (in the future staff will receive a notice about any modifications made to the documents).

Figure 4. Intranet with the Health and Safety Management System

As for the health and safety policy, copies (included in an internal journal) were sent to employees’ homes and also to all squads and work centres so that they could be hung in an easily visible place.

5. Sixth stage: audit

Following the Deming cycle model, the implementation process ends when the efficacy of the system has been assessed. Thus, the system was subjected to an internal audit in November by the same consulting company that provided guidance throughout the system implementation. Since the system had been implemented only for some months, several unclear points were found in the documents and assignments.

6. Seventh stage: certification

The certification process was initiated once the internal audit had been completed. Certification was awarded by an external certification body, which audited the wholemanagement system.

An audit of documentation, e.g. the Manual of Management and Procedures, was previously conducted. This allowed the external auditors to become familiar with Parcs I Jardins and compare the available documentation with that required by law and OHSAS 18001.

Subsequently, the actual auditing process began:

1- Initial meeting: meeting between the audit team and Management, introduction of both parties and detailed description of the audit plan by the audit manager.

2- Audit of documentation: verification of unclear aspects detected in the previous phase, revision of original documents (signature control and revisions), register control and follow-up of work procedures and instructions, staff training on occupation risk prevention, other documents required by law (prevention plan, risk assessment, planning of corrective measures, etc.)

3- Visits: the following were the most significant ones:

a. Several work centres were sampled.

b. Work areas were visited so that the audit team could check the accuracy of the risk assessment.

c. Employees from different groups were interviewed: gardening teams, pruning teams, applicators of phytosanitary products, administrative staff, area managers, etc.

d. Safety stores and individual protection equipment were inspected.

4- Final meeting: detected evidence and non-compliances were detailed to the Management and prevention service.

Once the audit report was finished, a data collection form of each of the detected non- compliances including future actions, implementation term and people in charge was drawn up.

CONCLUSIONS

Injury rate reduction

For the first time in the last few years, the injury rate decreased in 2007, putting an end to the upwards trend that prevailed in our statistics. Tables 5, 6 and 7 show the annual and monthly decrease.

Note: The last row in Tables 5, 6 and 7 indicates the monthly objective value and the annual total. This value is 5% less than that in 2006 and is shown in green when the value in 2007 is lower that this acceptance/objective value. These objectives are revised and defined every year, in compliance with OHSAS 18001.

Table 5. Comparative of the evolution of the frequency rate between 2006 and 2007

Table 6. Comparative of the evolution of the gravity rate between 2006 and 2007

Table 7. Comparative of the evolution of the incidence rate between 2006 and 2007

The total number of accidents, whether resulting in sick leaves or not, and the main statistical indices of occupational injuries, i.e. incidence, seriousness of accidents and average duration, decreased. In this sense, it is worth noting that visits to mutual

insurance companies (again whether leading to sick leaves or not) have dropped, which is indicative of greater integration of prevention into the organisation structure.

Integration of prevention

The assignments and duties of all intervening actors are defined in the Manual of the Health and Safety Management System. Thus, concepts about tasks have been clarified, avoiding excessive assignment of tasks or unassigned tasks.

During the training stage, all employees who had been assigned duties related to the system received instruction. In subsequent training sessions staff have been informed of the duties and tasks that they are required to carry out according to the work group to which they belong.

Documentation

The implementation of the Health and Safety Management System in compliance with OHSAS 18001 involved sorting all documentation related to prevention, in particular work instructions and registers. This led to the homogenisation of methods, equipment and materials.

ANNEXES

Annex 1: Occupational Health and Safety Policy.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

We are very grateful to NOVOTEC for their technical support throughout the implementation process of OHSAS 18001 in Parcs i Jardins and to APPLUS for their effort to “understand” our organisation during the few days the audit took and for helping us improve our employees’ health and safety.

We also wish to thank the entire organisation, from Management to squads, for their cooperation in the implementation of the Health and Safety Management System.

ANNEX 1

HEALTH AND SAFETY POLICY

PARCS I JARDINS DE BARCELONA, INSTITUT MUNICIPAL defines the protection of their employees’ health as one of its strategic objectives.

Persons are the most important asset as they ensure the future of the organisation. For this reason, they have the right to work in a safe environment and the duty to preserve it and contribute to its improvement individually.

Risk prevention is an integral part of the Institut’s operation and structure. Each person is responsible for his/her own safety and that of staff he/she is in charge of.

According to these principles, PARCS I JARDINS hereby agrees to:

Disseminate the present policy among the organisation staff, collaborating companies and other interested parties.

Implement and ensure operation of an occupational Health and Safety Management System which guarantees continuous improvement.

Ensure compliance with current legislation concerning occupational risk prevention.

Identify and assess risks associated with activities performed by PARCS I JARDINS in order to avoid, eliminate or reduce them.

Establish the necessary means to provide staff training and raise awareness about prevention.

Foster staff communication and participation.

Barcelona, 29 May 2006