ORCHSE is committed to providing unparalleled health, safety, and environmental services to our member companies. This Report provides a brief summary and highlights of the organization’s accomplishments in 2017. At the outset we want to acknowledge the contributions of our members. Simply put, the business would not have accomplished what it did or be where it is today without the continued commitment and support of our members. We feel honored and privileged to be working with and for you.
For more than 45 years, ORCHSE has been helping companies achieve HSE performance excellence by providing thought leadership and fostering constructive working relationships with leaders and policymakers in government, labor, industry, and key professional organizations. And this past year was no different ‒ 2017 was another banner year for the organization.
Network Meetings:
Our nine networks held 26 different meetings in the US, Europe, and Asia that allowed members to engage with key policymakers, authors, industry leaders, experts, and each other. These meetings offered content that is unique to ORC HSE and would be difficult to replicate. For example, our main OSH group featured sessions involving the heads of the federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), the Occupational Safety and Health Review Commission (OSHRC), the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH), the Chemical Safety Board (CSB), and the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB). In addition, the OSH group hosted four past OSHA Assistant Secretaries for an interactive dialogue that provided unique insights into Agency operations and challenges confronting OSHA. The OSH group also hosted a political insiders panel that provided a unique look at political developments in Washington in the first year of the Trump administration and their likely impact on worker safety and health. These sessions were complemented by sessions featuring authors and experts like Todd Conklin and Rob Fisher and, perhaps most important, with extensive member benchmarking and many effective practice sessions involving technical experts from member companies.
The OSH group is but one example out of nine different networks. Each network has its own discrete offering and a unique story to tell for 2017.
Valuable Services and Benefits Provided to Members
The network meetings represent a small proportion of the ORCHSE value equation. In addition to the network meetings, many more services were provided, including:
Compliance Assistance and Effective Interaction with Governmental Agencies
ORCHSE worked to influence the regulatory and standard-setting process and met numerous requests for compliance assistance by the broad ORC HSE membership and by individual member companies.
- ORCHSE provided input on proposed OSHA standards, regulations, and compliance activities, such as OSHA’s electronic recordkeeping rule, anti-retaliation rule, Voluntary Protection Program, beryllium standard, and walking and working surfaces standard.
- Input was provided to NIOSH on its new approach to protecting workers from chemicals through exposure banding.
- ORCHSE crafted several letters for members requesting agency interpretations from OSHA that resulted in favorable interpretations of standards.
- ORCHSE on-staff experts addressed numerous requests for regulatory interpretations. Among the topics addressed were walking and working surfaces, electrical safety, OSHA recordkeeping, electronic data submission, the general duty clause, and anti-retaliation.
- Guidance was also provided to members requesting assistance in responding to OSHA issuance of citations and penalties.
Benchmarking
Extensive benchmarking is a hallmark of ORC HSE; it is a critical way for companies to stay abreast of our evolving profession and reduce their learning curve. During 2017 we provided the greatest number of benchmarking opportunities in our 45-plus year history. And our members responded enthusiastically. Those opportunities included:
- Annual performance benchmarking that included global injury and illness experience;
- Thirty-five ad hoc benchmarking surveys custom built to address specific issues raised by member companies;
- Real-time benchmarking surveys conducted at ORC HSE network meetings using attendee polling;
- Special topic benchmarking meetings hosted at ORC HSE member companies. Topics addressed included:
– Use of Alternative Protective Measures & Machine Guarding in Lieu of Lockout
– HSE Performance Metrics and Leading Indicators
– HSE Risk Identification and Management
– FSI (Fatality & Serious Injury) Prevention Programs
– Quick response to member requests on special issues.
Provision of Critical Information on HSE
In 2017, ORC continued to serve as a clearinghouse for critical information that could impact HSE operations. Through the ORCHSE newsletters and webpage, members were kept abreast of regulatory, compliance, legislative, political, technical, and professional developments that otherwise would have been difficult for them to track and manage.
- Bi-monthly Newsletters – with an “open rate” of 20-40% for our newsletters (the industry average is 17%), OSH had 825 readers, Global had 330 readers, and Environmental had 175 readers. A total of 72 newsletters were mailed during the year, which presented over 2,000 timely articles on news developments of interest to our members.
- Detailed Quarterly Updates – 12 updates were issued, four for each subject area ‒ OSH, Global EH&S, and Environmental ‒ providing a comprehensive overview of all the significant news occurring over the previous three months.
- Consultant Showcase Updates were provided at every meeting summarizing key developments in and outside of government
- For members in networks covering business overseas, detailed Profiles of HSE legal requirements were provided for 65 countries and provinces.
- ORC members enjoyed unlimited access to our on-staff experts during the year.
Training
ORCHSE members have ongoing training needs. As part of its membership package, ORC HSE provided training to member companies through a variety of means:
- At meetings
- Webinars – 5 different webinars were held in 2017 and attended by a broad range of ORC HSE constituents, including over 700 site technical staff rarely able to attend network meetings; and
- ORCHSE company-specific training was provided by ORC HSE staff on a variety of topics either on site or remotely.
Impacting the Profession
- Convened a Leadership Roundtable with the leaders and senior staff from the National Safety Council (NSC), the American Society of Safety Professionals (ASSP, formerly ASSE), and the American Industrial Hygiene Association (AIHA).
- Relationships were also maintained with the heads of key federal agencies (OSHA, NIOSH, CSB, NTSB) and the EU-OSHA.
- Participated in ISO 45001, ANSI Z-10 (S&H management systems), and ANSI Z-16 (S&H performance measurement).
- ORCHSE presented at the World Safety Congress in Singapore.
- Co-hosted, moderated, and presented at the “Executive Summit” as a pre-event at the 2017 World Congress on Safety and Health at Work, which brought together approximately 65 OSH leaders from around the world.
- Chaired the program committee and presented at the 20th Annual Applied Ergonomics Conference in Orlando, FL.
Thought Leadership
- A White Paper was authored by ORC HSE that proposed new approaches to prevention by OSHA and highlighting changes that need to take place in the safety and health profession.
- An article on Fatality and Serious Injury Prevention written by ORC HSE was published in Industrial Safety and Health News, a publication with 70,000 readers.
- Another ORCHSE article was also published by ISHN on Human and Organizational Performance.
- ORCHSE is leading the planning process and will facilitate a national Summit on Human and Organizational Performance in February/March 2018.
- We continued our work with our ORC HSE-organized team on the New View of Safety to develop new, more effective approaches to fatal and serious injury and illness prevention.
- ORCHSE is participating on a National Academies of Sciences Engineering and Medicine (NASEM) panel on Collaboration on Workplace Hazardous Exposure Management.
Access to Our User-Friendly Website and Presence in Social Media
In 2017 ORC HSE strengthened the remote aspects of our service offering:
- ORCHSE continued to update and augment our members-only website. Members can now locate past network meeting presentations, newsletters, quarterly updates, regulatory submissions, articles, and job postings.
- We launched a new public website to promote our resources and services, and to share our key learnings.
- A new ORC HSE blog was established to facilitate dialogue with our members and others in the profession.
Fee-Based Consulting
In addition to the services that are included with membership, ORCHSE offers on-site fee-based consulting on a wide variety of issues. 2017 marked the busiest year on record for ORCHSE Consulting Services, serving a significant number of clients from non-member and member companies. During the year the majority of our services focused on:
- Support of Mergers & Acquisitions
- Safety Management System Assessments
- OSHA Recordkeeping Assessments and corporate audits
- Fatality Investigations
- Fatality and Serious Injury (FSI) Prevention
- Assessment of Life-Safety Critical programs
- Expert support to legal counsel
- Contractor Safety Management
- EHS Auditor Certification Training
- Speaker support to member EHS Conferences
We also interviewed, approved and included within our consulting network — ten additional subject matter experts to further enhance support to current and future client needs.
Consulting services were provided within a variety of industry segments in the U. S. and internationally. While providing quality services to our clients, we were also exposed to a number of industry innovations and best practices that will ultimately benefit our member companies and future clients.
