A New Model for Evaluating Occupational Health and Safety Management Systems (OHSMS)

Abstract

Since January 2010, by “Fondazione Alma Mater” in Bologna, a task force is operating in constructing a new model able to evaluate the performance of a company, concerning health and safety in the workplace. Academic and company members, in spite of different cultural background, collaborate to the task force, because in the project many features are involved: organizational-economic, legal and medical-psychological and engineering features. The target is to develop a methodology that quantifies the “health and safety” level of a company. Several scientific and company components, (a number wider than that of the mentioned authors) have contributed and worked together to build this new tool, whose main goal is to achieve a synthetic evaluation of the existing management system and to identify the organizational model, though not formalized in a management system, able to depict the acquired level of health and safety warranties for the workers. The tool worthiness is strictly operative and allows the company organization to improve its performances by acting on the identified critical issues, in any case ensuring that the model tested and licensed contains a high level of reliability. In the present paper the structure of the arranged model is introduced and the reasons of the performed choices are explained.