IADC recently convened a workgroup meeting to discuss a recent announcement from the US Department of Labor’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) involving leading indicators.
According to a Trade Release published by OSHA,
“Leading indicators are proactive and preventive measures that can provide insight on the effectiveness of safety and health activities and reveal potential problems. They are vital in reducing worker fatalities, injuries, illnesses, and financial impacts.”
OSHA is encouraging stakeholders to share feedback on the effectiveness of leading indicators, with hopes of developing a resource tool for industry. IADC will be partnering with the American Petroleum Institute (API) and the Onshore Safety Alliance (OSA) to submit comments to OSHA in July.
As the development of a Leading Indicators Resource is under consideration, OSHA is seeking detailed feedback on various questions, such as the following:
- What leading indicators do you use?
- What lagging indicators do you use (OSHA incident rates, for example)?
- What leading indicators are, or could be, commonly used in your industry?
- What metrics do you share with top management?
- How do you determine the effectiveness of your leading indicators?
- Do you link your leading indicators to outcome data, such as OSHA incident rates to evaluate results?
- How could employers be encouraged to use leading indicators in addition to lagging indicators to improve safety management systems?
- What barriers and challenges, if any, have you encountered to using leading indicators?
As a unified voice for the drilling industry, IADC is looking forward to joining with fellow associations/coalitions in providing industry perspectives on this matter.
