Initial Safety Review: A New Cost-Effective Way to Evaluate Safety Management Systems

The Initial Safety Review tool focuses on the most significant health and safety topics in a simple and direct approach. By relying on HSE experience, skill, and expertise rather than the rigid structure of an external standard, one can quickly dial into a company’s HSE strengths and weaknesses.

Initial HSE Reviews identify low-hanging fruit so there is accelerated improvement to HSE performance, culture, and processes. This can be especially important for companies with new safety programs, manuals, or management systems.

The key to an Initial Safety Review is to identify the strengths and weaknesses of a company’s HSE Management System, Program, or Manual. And after that, provide meaningful recommendations to address any deficiencies. Also, we can help you implement identified action items or provide more customized consulting services as you require.

NOTE: The Initial HSE Review is not a compliance audit and is not intended to identify non-compliances to HSE legislation. Also, the Initial HSE Review is not a conformance audit and is not intended to identify non-conformances to a specific HSE standard (i.e., COR, ISO, etc.). However, noted non-compliance and non-conformances are shared with the client. These are examples of how we like to add extra value to our customers.

Similar to an audit, an Initial Safety Review gathers data about a company’s HSE system and culture to determine its strengths and weaknesses. Information is gathered through documentation review, interviews, and observation tours. 

For information on our traditional audit services click here.

However, there are three main differences between a traditional HSE audit and an Initial HSE Review:

1. Cost
2. Time
3. Structure vs. Experience

1. Initial Safety Review Advantage: Cost

In my experience being on both sides of the fence (as a consultant and company representative), most HSE audits cost over $15,000 (I’ve even seen them cost over $50,000 in some cases) as the audits require the auditor to prepare for, conduct the audit, and write a report based on a specific pre-determined structure. Of course, the audit approach has many advantages but the major downside is the high cost.

Initial HSE Reviews start as low as $1500. Firstly, they can help a small company with a basic HSE system wanting to know what is and isn't working. Secondly, maybe your company is starting to build an HSE manual and isn't sure where to start.  Thirdly, maybe you are a contractor who either wants to prepare for a client HSE audit. Lastly, maybe you are a client who wants a simple and efficient tool to assess their contractor’s HSE processes. These are all great examples of where the Initial HSE Review can be very beneficial.

In all of these situations (and more) the Initial Safety Review can help a company save on time and money by leveraging an HSE expert to help them avoid common mistakes which can drain their company resources. Obviously, a review on a company with more processes will take longer and the cost will reflect that but it will still be more cost-effective to choose to do an Initial HSE Review compared to an audit or building a system without guidance.

2. Initial Safety Review Advantage: Time

Traditional HSE audits are very structured and thorough but they take up substantial company resources. Audits can be time-consuming both for the auditor and for company personnel as someone in-house needs to prepare for the audit by gathering documentation, prepping staff, and coordinating an audit schedule for the auditor. Furthermore, the same audit tool and questions are used over and over so subsequent audits provide diminishing value. Click here to read an article that expands on this idea.

Also, critical positions need to be made available for lengthy interviews which can be inconvenient. Lastly, writing audit reports is labor-intensive and may take between four and ten days (or more) depending on company size as well as audit type and scope.

An Initial HSE Review uses a checklist made up of 100 questions that cover nine main HSE topic categories. If a question does not apply then we quickly move to the next one. We focus on identifying strengths and weaknesses and don’t have to worry about ticking all the boxes for the audit protocol. This saves us an incredible among of time both in collecting information and writing the review report. In turn, we get to pass on these cost savings to our clients.

3. Initial Safety Review Advantage: Structure vs. Experience

The main difference between a traditional HSE audit and an Initial Safety Review is that audits rely on audit standards. An auditor is required to audit the company against all audit elements regardless of relevance or value.

While an Initial HSE Review allows experienced HSE professionals to immediately dial in and identify what is and isn't working. This is extremely beneficial as it is an efficient and lower-cost method to identify HSE deficiencies that pose a risk to your employees and your bottom line. The approach here is to rely more on experience than structure. Our HSE professionals have worked with audit standards so you are actually getting the advantage of structure and experience here.

I have used this philosophy many times in my life. When I was looking for a martial art teacher, I looked for an expert that could help me learn the most in the shortest amount of time. I still had to put in the time and work but I got much farther ahead than I would have if I had chosen a lesser instructor who had more structure (i.e., a bigger organization with more rules) behind them.

NOTE: It is also important to subsequently take a deeper dive into a system which is why we call this the “Initial Safety (or HSE) Review”. Once the low-hanging fruit has been addressed it is important to keep peeling back the layers of the HSE onion. But the Initial Safety Review helps companies understand where to start and initially focus their HSE resources.

As you can see, there are many advantages of having an Initial Safety Review performed on your company versus a traditional audit. These benefits include lower cost, less time invested, and relying on experience vs. structure. 

At the end of the day, it matters little what we call the HSE evaluation. What matters is that a company hires a competent and experienced HSE professional who can quickly identify critical HSE matters and offer practical solutions to help improve the company’s HSE system, culture, and performance.

Whether you need an Initial HSE Review, a traditional HSE audit, or a new HSE Management System, HSE Program, or HSE Manual, we have you covered. We’ve been doing this for over 15 years and have developed numerous HSE evaluation processes and system frameworks for a range of companies including small local family-owned businesses and large international organizations. For more information, please get in touch with Risk Defense Inc. by filling out the contact form below.