Who's where, when and why
July 1st 2010

The Occupational Safety and Health Administration has laid out extensive regulations for maintaining health and safety in an industrial setting. Phil Muller, sales director for Kalamazoo Secure Solutions, assesses how organisations can strive to fulfil their duty of care and remain health and safety compliant

OSHA regulations cover many facets of the industrial setting and affect both employees and individuals surrounding the environment. For example, controlling access to an industrial environment is key to maintaining site security standards and ensuring a company consistently fulfils its duty of care to employees, visitors and contractors.

A dedicated visitor management solution provides a reliable system for recording visitor and contractor details, in order to identify who is on the premises, the purpose of the visit is and who the host is. The visitor or contractor pass gives instant identification with clear time scales of the visit.

Restricting access A visitor management system can be instrumental in restricting unauthorised access to an organisation and in particular high-risk areas, therefore significantly reducing the risk of injury and/or damage.

The visitor pass is only awarded to those who are strictly permitted to enter the environment and must be clearly visible at all times. This enables employees and contractors to quickly and easily identify who a person is and whether they should be granted access to specific areas of the building.

Health and safety Health and safety regulations state that every person within a building, whether employees, temporary staff, visitors or contractors, must be made aware of emergency exits and procedures. For employees, this generally constitutes part of an induction process, but for visitors, including contractors working within the building, this can sometimes be overlooked.

A visitor management system can be fundamental in ensuring key information such as fire exits, evacuation meeting points and a layout of the building is clearly communicated. This information can be incorporated on the reverse of the guest pass and provides visitors and contractors with a quick point of reference should an emergency occur.What's more, by completing the signing in process the visitor acknowledges that they have read and understood the company health and safety policy.

Emergency It is imperative that businesses develop a response plan in the event of an emergency, for example in the event of a fire. A designated visitor management system provides companies with the ability to produce an accurate fire list and quickly determine exactly who is in the building.

This facility clearly complements all other emergency-related processes to ensure maximum safety and security for visitors and contractors onsite.

Visitor management system A dedicated visitor management system can take a range of formats, including softwarebased systems – suitable for companies with a larger volume of visitors, or a paper-based system.

A software-based visitor management system provides the ability to capture detailed information, quickly pre-book guests into the system and pre-print badges in preparation for their arrival. Using an electronic signature pad, organisations digitally capture a visitor's signature to show acknowledgement of important information such as health and safety policies. A photo capture facility ensures the visitor pass is not used by anyone except the named visitor.

What's more, an electronic visitor pass system can provide an extensive reporting facility, enabling organisations to run reports detailing peak visitor times, the number of contractors who have been onsite and produce instant fire lists at the click of a button.

Alternatively, a hand-written visitor pass system is simple and effective to use; visitors simply fill in their details onto a pass and the information is simultaneously transferred onto an integral register. This information is kept confidential with a discretion sheet. The integral register forms an up-to-date list of who is on the premises and can prove vital in an emergency situation.

Risk analysis The Permit to Work system complements a manual visitor or contractor system by proving an effective way of assessing the risk associated with any job. Once completed this 3-part set assists in carrying out the corrective action necessary to ensure contractors and visitors to the area remain safe from harm. However the software-based system can include the Permit to Work management facility and fulfil other specialist requirements.

Today, companies face massive repercussions, including imprisonment and financial penalties, should they be found negligible in protecting people within their premises. For that reason it is important to consider how people are invited into the building, completing the registration process and managing individuals once in the building.

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