Columns

Frank Lautenberg, the New Jersey senator credited with helping create the Chemical Safety Board, has died at age 89.

More than 1.9 million people worked in the wholesale trade – non-durable goods industry in 2011, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. That year, recordable injuries exceeded 81,000, and occurred at a rate of 4.4 per 100 full-time workers.

I’ve used “past and future” as a theme for this column before. But looking at the coverage in this month’s issue of Safety+Health, I’m struck by how, once more, it applies.

The connection between leadership and process safety has not always been clear. Leaders often struggle to identify how or whether they affect process safety outcomes.

For a bill to become law, it must pass both houses of Congress and be signed by the president. However, if a bill is not passed within two years, or a single congressional session, the process must start all over again.

As part of the 2013 Job Outlook survey, Safety+Health asked safety professionals if job titles and the responsibilities that come with them are consistent across the field. Results showed a majority of respondents answered “no.”

In late 2011, a bill was signed into law providing an incentive for legislators to reach across the aisle and come to an agreement on how to reduce the deficit. If no agreement was reached, the bill would implement across-the-board cuts to both military funding and discretionary funding, which covers government agencies such as OSHA.

For many leaders, becoming good at safety requires learning how to do things differently.

Do you have the right people in the right places to drive your safety strategy? Many leaders recognize that achieving world-class performance is requiring new competencies and skills for safety professionals and all leaders.

Many incident investigation systems are designed to look at what has happened, not what outcome could reasonably happen. Yet it’s precisely this ability to detect, categorize and respond to potential that is crucial for great safety performance.