Essentially, a safety management system for construction is a systematic way of identifying hazards and managing hazards related to the construction site.
The SMS should include the policies, procedures, systems, organizational deployment and responsibilities of the construction company to ensure that necessary precautions have been taken and are being maintained for the safety of all stakeholders. More than this, the SMS must be embedded in the culture of the company, so that it is applied by all.
A properly performing SGS will normally include:
• Identification of all security risks related to the company's activities and risk assessment associated with each risk.
• Risk management procedures to maintain hazard risk to acceptable levels (which in some cases may mean a level of zero).
• Continuous monitoring with regular assessment of safety performance.
• Continuous improvement of the effectiveness of the safety management system.
These elements are often managed in a "continuous improvement improvement" cycle, or a PDCA cycle for short.
1. Plan. Based on the risk and risk assessment, the safety policy and procedures and the resources allocated for its implementation are defined.
2. Doing. The policy and procedures are applied.
3. Check. Security performance is measured in order to verify the relevance, completeness, effectiveness and efficiency of the implementation.
4. Law. Any corrective measures or appropriate improvements that are returned to the previous planning step (1) are defined to restart the cycle.
An SMS is a method, rather than a product. The implementation of an SMS can be paper-based or software-based, for example.