What are safety audit?

The health and safety management audit our members adopted is a

structured process of collecting independent information on the efficiency,
effectiveness and reliability of the total H&S management system and drawing
up plans for corrective action.
Auditing examines each stages in the H&S management system by
measuring compliance with the controls the organisation has developed, with
the ultimate aim of assessing their effectiveness and their validity for the
future.
Are there many types of safety audit?
Well, roughly speaking, we could sum up at least six types of audit which are
related to health and safety:
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Health and safety audits

"Walk around audit"
Health and safety management audit
Project Health, Safety & Environmental (HSE) auditing
Process safety audit
Product safety audit
The Safety & Health Audit Recognition Programme (SHARP)
Auditor List for SHARP

Health and safety audits

Objectives of this type of safety auditing are to inform the company:
-

How well it is performing in H&S

Whether managers and others are meeting the standards which the company
has set itself
Whether the company is complying with the H&S laws which affect its business
With the view that the company making any improvements identified as
necessary from this information.

" walk around audit"

A " walk around audit" is to determine whether the health and safety policies
of the company are being properly implemented and to identify areas in which
policy effectiveness needs to be improved.

H&S management audits

One of the main problems with H&S audits of the above type is that they tend
to examine H&S problems from the symptoms rather than causes of the
problems. They rarely focus entirely on the management of H&S.
Project Health, Safety & Environmental (HSE) auditing
Project HSE auditing provides the method for monitoring and controlling HSE
activities and procedures throughout the life of the project. It comprises of two
activities:
- Formal audits
- Regular and ad-hoc inspections

The formal audits provide a more comprehensive and formal assessment of

compliance with HSE procedures and plans. They should be carried out at key
points during the project life cycle.
PROCESS SAFETY AUDITS
It is a self-evaluation audit which aims at:
1. gather all relevant documentation covering process safety
management requirements at a specific facility
2. determine the program's implementation and effectiveness by
following up on their application to one or more selected
processes.
2. PRODUCT SAFETY AUDIT
3. Safety Audit is important in the product design and development stages.
It is to ensure that the company had adequately protected the user of a
product from hazards that it did not know existed. This type of audit is to
-

Identify and classify hazards associated with the product i.e. catastrophic, critical,
occasional, remote, or improbable
Develop a hazard risk index and priority setting
Get employee to present design alternatives and to review for feasibility

The Safety & Health Audit Recognition Programme (SHARP)

The Safety & Health Audit Recognition Programme (SHARP) is developed

and administered by the Society of Accredited Safety Auditors Ltd. (SASA)
and The Hong Kong Registered Safety Auditors Association (HKRSAA)
(collectively referred to as the Programme Administrator or PA) to enhance
the professional standard and performance of safety and health audits
conducted in accordance with the Factories and Industrial Undertakings
(Safety Management) Regulations. The objective is to procure excellent
and quality audits that are well above legal requirements and trade
expectation so as to achieve advancement in the occupational safety and
health performance in Hong Kong.