Safety Compliance Audits

At Best in the West Safety we work closely with clients to provide on-site safety compliance audits for construction, healthcare, manufacturing and other workplaces.  Due to our 30 years of working with a wide range of businesses in different work environments we provide a unique perspective and the opportunity to share our knowledge on what may be a hazard at your workplace.  We also bring to you the latest areas that OSHA is actively reviewing and share how best to bring your business into compliance.  All of our safety compliance audits provide five key areas of compliance:  Hazardous materials management, stormwater compliance (if applicable), OSHA safety standards in both construction or general industry, NFPA life safety code and hazardous chemicals safety consensus standards, and NIOSH consensus standards.

Our safety compliance audits are customized to each client and their workplace.  Addresses, management contacts, dates and environmental conditions are mentioned.  Key OSHA safety topics are covered that include workplace postings, safety health programs, first aid/CPR, emergency eye washes and then our observations sections.  The observations include unsafe work conditions, unsafe worker acts, with descriptions of what is wrong, what needs improvement and what standards or best practices apply.  Whenever possible we work with the safety manager or the site foreman to correct the safety hazards immediately and document that in the reports.  Lastly a general comment on our safety perception of the workplace and worker compliance is covered.

How do these reports benefit the client you might ask?

1. By using a third party safety consulting business, you will receive a different viewpoint. We have found that on average, we find 2 to 3 times more hazards in the work environment because our professionals are seeing the work areas differently.  Often workers become “blind” to the unlabeled drum in the corner because it has always been there.
2. By bringing in a third party consultant to routinely evaluate your place of business, you are demonstrating to OSHA that you are showing a good faith effort to improve the work environment to provide a workplace free from safety and health hazards.
3. As a safety consulting business with a team that has worked closely with different businesses we can bring to you our historical lessons learned to help improve and/or develop new safe work practices.
4. In many cases, the workers view the company spending their resources bringing in outside safety professionals as a way that helps protect them. Safety culture is enhanced in the long run.  In addition, workers often open up with questions and concerns to an outsider more often that to management due to perceived fears of job reprisals.
5. A major benefit of these safety audits is you will have an impartial third party consultant available with historical site knowledge that can help you easily get out of complaints. How does this help you may ask.  We had a client that OSHA had a complaint letter sent to them.  The complaint said on a specific date, there were exposed electrical wires on spider junction box.  There were trades using extension cords that were missing grounding prongs or damaged.  We were able to show over the last 6 months, 12 reports that specifically identified positive findings and only two had identified these hazards but the issues were immediately corrected and cords taken out of service.  Documentation in the reports that the GC and site foreman immediately took corrective action, the fact that the GC also retrained all site workers, demonstrated a good faith effort to comply with safety standards, which led OSHA  to the close the complaint.

Hazard assessments are a critical part of safety compliance audits to identify, evaluate, and mitigate workplace risks. These audits ensure regulatory compliance, reduce workplace accidents, and improve overall safety culture.