Intervention Effectiveness Research-Engineering Design of Safety and Health Programs by Optimizing Intervention Activity

摘要

Safety and health programs are often implemented without a quantified design. The objective of thisrnstudy was to determine if a safety and health program could be quantified and optimized through arndesign that minimizes incident rates and the percentage of available human resources required tornimplement it. A model was developed for this purpose.rnIn a two-phase empirical study, an oil production operation was analyzed. Four categories ofrninterventions were studied 1) behavior modification, incentives, awareness; 2) training; 3)rnjob/procedural design; 4) equipment. The percentage of available time spent implementingrninterventions in these categories was the independent variable and the incident rate was the dependentrnvariable. Findings show a mathematical relationship between interventions and incident rate. Thernresulting best-fit equation is an intuitively expected exponential function showing a decreasingrnincident rate with an increasing intervention application rate. This model can be used to analyze thernmathematical function for a minimized incident rate, aiding in design of optimized safety and healthrnprograms.rnIn the second phase, an attempt was made to determine whether a designed safety and healthrnprogram could be optimized to minimize the loss producing incident rate. In this phase, thernobjective was to use the mathematical function developed in phase 1 to formulate a model thatrncalculates a minimized incident rate. Evaluating 81 application rate level combinations of fourrnintervention categories and subjecting them to management constraints accomplished this. Thernresulting model provided insight into the design of a safety and health program that prescribes thernappropriate amount of human resource time that should be assigned to specific safety and healthrnintervention activity.rnActual verification data were used to test the adequacy and accuracy of the optimization model.rnFindings indicate that the model predicts with reasonable accuracy, intuitively expected results. Thernmodel shows promise as a potential tool to aid safety and health engineers in designing their safetyrnand health programs. It also shows promise in providing some predictability of safety and healthrnperformance under given safety and health program designs (Haight, Thomas, Smith, Bulfin andrnHopkins, 2001).