Occupational safety engineer: duties, job description and instruction

Such a position, as an occupational safety engineer, should exist in any enterprise, regardless of its form of ownership, because the duty of any employer is to provide the safest conditions for everyone who works in his organization.

An important and very interesting profession

Obviously, there is simply no free time for the managerial staff, which could be devoted to monitoring the implementation of all safety standards and rules for each individual worker. Therefore, such a responsible mission is entrusted to the safety engineer, who must have experience as an engineer in the industry, so that the performance of his direct duties is as simple and understandable to him as possible. He must not only control the whole situation at the enterprise, but also make sure that dangerous situations never arise.

Some nuances

As already mentioned, such a position should exist in any organization. There are some nuances that it is important to know for both the employer and the potential engineer:

• If the company employs more than 50 people, the OSH service must necessarily be in place (in practice, only a labor protection engineer will be registered in such a small company);
• The duties of such a specialist in enterprises where fewer than 50 employees can be performed by the head or employee himself, on whom he will entrust such duties;

• An occupational safety engineer must have appropriate education, and preferably experience in such a field;
• A good specialist must necessarily understand the current legislative framework, understand the normative acts and specialized rules relating to the area in which the enterprise operates.

More about duties

Before becoming an employee of the enterprise and starting his new interesting work, the future OSH engineer should not only be superficially aware of his duties, but be absolutely and completely aware of them, because a large enterprise that will employ such a specialist is a dangerous an object.

The list of the most important and paramount duties of the occupational safety engineer should include the following:

• Certification of workplaces . It is clear that a safe enterprise must consist of safe jobs. The duties of a labor safety engineer imply that the specialist must personally verify their condition and maintain current control over him, promptly reacting to any kind of danger. Attestation of the workplace should be conducted at least once every five years. Also, new equipment must be subject to certification, which is not yet involved in production.
• The injunction of the labor protection engineer states that he must not only conduct attestations, but also, after finding inconsistencies, to offer solutions to a particular issue. In large and developed organizations, there is the practice of finding new solutions to such problems through the organization of events where employees themselves can express their opinion on how to make work more secure.
• Attestation of workers. In any organization (even in educational institutions) special lectures are held, at which the workers (students) should be explained in detail the safety rules. Confirmation that such lectures were listened to by each of the employees are their signatures in a special registration journal.

• If an entire labor protection service functions at the enterprise, then the regular duties of the labor safety engineer also include a regular planned and unscheduled inspection of the compliance of the safety level in each separate shop or department. If a discrepancy is found, the responsible person will be responsible. The head has the right to choose the penalty for his subordinate himself.
• The accident investigation commission , which must also include a health and safety engineer, must make important decisions related to compensation for damage to one or another employee who has suffered during the labor process. This means that the labor safety engineer's instruction also includes information that clearly states that an expert should understand the letter of the law and operate with rules and regulations that apply to the activities of the organization.

Also, the entrepreneur has the full right to change this list, adding to it new responsibilities.

What should a good safety engineer know?

In order to be able to fulfill their duties without any problems and difficulties, any health and safety engineer should be well acquainted with:

• Labor Code: this is the main document that will serve as a basis for decision-making;
• Acts of legislation that are directly related to the safety of production; The specialist should also closely monitor the updating of such a database;

• Terms and regularity of carrying out of repeated attestations and actions which should teach the usual worker how to secure itself in the course of activity;
• Features of equipment that operates in the enterprise: this fact is very important, because without the necessary knowledge it will be unrealistic to conduct certification of equipment; And this means that by his own hands will sign, perhaps, an inadequate document engineer for labor protection;
• Responsibilities and the level of responsibility of each individual manager of the shop or department, because understanding who is responsible for what and what is responsible for the enterprise is the first step to the most perfect organization of activities.

Can a large enterprise employ only one labor protection engineer?

Obligations (education here is of great importance) an engineer can perform at a small enterprise one person. But the employer must be himself interested, so that the number of workers and similar specialists corresponds to the proportion, that is, the larger the enterprise, the more labor protection engineers. After all, it is much cheaper to ensure the safety of the labor process than to pay the bills of the victims during work in unsafe conditions of workers.

On the Rights of the Occupational Safety Engineer

Since the work of this specialist is more closely connected with monitoring and timely verification, he has, for example, the right without warning to enter any work shop and inspect any workplace.

The engineer for labor protection has the right:

• To verify the correctness of the drafting of documents relating to labor and technical safety of equipment;
• Help managers make decisions about imposing penalties on employees who violate safety standards, endangering themselves, other people, equipment;

• To introduce for the consideration of heads the issue of encouraging workers who comply with all the rules of safety and labor protection;
• Temporarily suspend from the performance of their direct labor duties persons who deliberately violently violate safety techniques, until the period when the leading link decides on the measure of punishment that the safety engineer must also approve.

The duties and rights of a specialist in this field are directly related and can also be interdependently varied.

Who directly interacts with the health and safety engineer?

Obligations (introductory briefing here also includes) a labor safety engineer say that he must constantly cooperate with technical workers, engineers and shop managers, auxiliary personnel, higher authorities.

Regardless of the size of the enterprise and the number of assistants to the safety engineer, all responsibility for the safety of the entire organization is on his shoulders.

Requirements to which the modern engineer for labor protection must meet

We have already briefly reviewed the duties, now we will make a picture of what the head of a good company will demand from a prospective employee.

So, these are the following qualities:

• Confident possession of the computer - since the health and safety engineer must timely form and provide reporting, without the help of computer technology and basic programs can not do;
• The successful passage of labor safety inspections : since preference is given to candidates who have already worked in this field for some time (not only as a labor safety engineer), accordingly, such checks should have taken place without any comments and problems;
• The ability to interact with inspection bodies , as the reporting on labor protection will be checked by higher authorities of the state; The engineer for labor protection must provide it in full force, on time, to be able to explain the data that is displayed in it.

And, as already mentioned, without a knowledge of the legislative base for a highly paid position in a good organization, a potential employee may not count.

On payment for the performance of such duties

A good security engineer in a large corporation can earn about ten to twelve minimum monthly wages. In government institutions, remuneration will be much lower, despite the fact that there the person will also work for exactly the same position - "Labor Safety Engineer". Obligations in housing, for example, in fact, it will be similar, as with the above-mentioned specialist. This graduation is related to the organization's ability to pay and the form of security. Budget organizations - this is a good start for young professionals, because here you can get the experience required from everyone, whose title is called "Safety Engineer." Duties in school, for example, such a specialist will be simple, but they will be enough to study the nuances and subtleties of this profession.

And finally ...

Occupational safety engineer should occupy only a very responsible person, because it will depend on the lives of dozens, hundreds of workers, who are waiting at home for families.