What You Need to Know About OSHA Audit

Facing an Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) inspection can be a challenging one. It will require you to comply with the standards for you to pass the test. This article will help you know the things that you need when the OSHA audit comes.

Chances for an OSHA audit

According to James Walsh, the author of Silver Lake Publishing’s Worker’s Comp for Employers and editor of OSHA in the Real World, the likelihood of OSHA inspection is high when employer companies recently faced workplace injuries and non-compliance. He added that inspectors tend to focus on industries that have bad safety records. These would include food processing, petrochemical and general chemical production, construction, textiles and heavy manufacturing. There are also the priorities of inspection set by the OSHA and they are as follows:

a.       Catastrophies and Fatal Accidents – this will include the death of an employee or the hospitalization of three or more employees.

b.      Employee Complaints – if employees are threatened by imminent danger or when they are working on hazardous conditions.

c.       Programmed High-Hazard – there are areas with high hazard rates and OSHA has set frequent inspections on these places.

d.      Follow-up inspections – to ensure that facilities have complied with previous inspections.

The OSHA Checkup

The compliance officer will explain the reason and the scope for the inspection. The officer will also provide a complaint copy for the inspection. You must expect an inspection when a recent accident happened or somebody has revealed the non-compliance to authorities. The inspectors will examine the workplace itself looking for equipment compliance. The officer will be accompanied by an employer representative all throughout the length of the inspection. The employees also have the right to attend to the inspection through a representative. To further assess the compliance of the facility, the inspecting body will interview number of employees as desired. This may reveal your safety program weaknesses as the officer gets to ask questions on your employees regarding safety compliance issues in your facility.

The inspectors will also check the required written programs, evidence of certification, training records, chemical inventories, MSDS and OSHA 300 Log. All of these will be part of your compliance in addition to maintaining a safe environment for your employees. You are obliged to supply copies of these documents to the inspecting officer in the length of the OSHA audit.

Non-compliance to their standards may result to penalties which may greatly affect the image of your company. The compliance to safety agencies like the EPA compliance and the OSHA audit will enable the government to ensure safety among workers and the integrity of the environment in providing a safe and clean workplace for the company. Also, the importance of waste reduction and tracking is a vital component of EPA compliance and all other ensuring bodies on clean environment and safe workplaces.