One of the most important things a safety coordinator can do to prevent incidents as well as compliance orders and violations is to make sure that regular inspections of the workplace are conducted. The name of the game: Find …

What to Do When OHS Officials Demand Your Incident Reports
One of your primary duties as a safety coordinator is to investigate safety incidents to determine why they happened and figure out how to prevent similar incidents from happening again. After completing your internal investigation, you’ll …

Part 1: The Committee’s Role in Workplace Inspections

Regular safety inspections are often your best and only shot at spotting and eliminating hazards before they create incidents and injuries. So smart safety coordinators should be willing to utilize every resource at their disposal to enhance the effectiveness of these inspections. One resource you can use to get more from inspections is your company’s joint health and safety committee (JHSC). (Some provinces use other terms for safety committees but, for simplicity’s sake, we’ll use JHSC to refer to them all.) The JHSC’s power to improve inspection results goes beyond simply bringing in extra sets of eyes. JHSC members include workers and supervisors who are familiar with the workplace and know where to look for hazards. They’re also in a position to “monitor the controls in place” and determine their weak points, says Ontario OHS consultant Yvonne O’Reilly.

The best way to keep workers healthy and safe is to prevent workplace incidents. One of the most important things a safety coordinator can do to prevent incidents as well as compliance orders and violations is to make sure that regular inspections of the workplace are conducted. The name of the game: Find and eliminate hazards before they cause an incident (or before OHS inspectors find them for you).

Here’s what the OHS law in your province or territory says about who may appeal orders from safety officials: