Sustain, Train, Maintain
Winston Churchill once quipped, “He who fails to plan is planning to fail.” In essence, failure is an option. It can either be experienced or averted through well thought-out precautions.
At Burris warehouses, a heavy emphasis is placed on safety awareness/readiness. Through careful planning, warehouse safety standards can be upheld on a consistent basis.
These standards are reached when:
- All of the teams SUSTAIN preexisting warehouse regulations and create different programs to ensure each team member’s health and safety,
- Supervisors TRAIN their employees to operate according to industry standards, and
- Warehouses MAINTAIN consistency in record keeping and in performing their own warehouse inspections to prepare for when actual health and safety inspectors visit.
By remembering to sustain preexisting regulations, train warehouse employees, and maintain constant preparations, warehouse safety standards can be met. Planning, effectively done, garners success.
A big thank you goes to Doug Lillie, CIRO – Manager of Environmental Compliance for inspiring this article and for his commitment to the safety of our warehouse team members. If you would like to learn more about safety in the workplace, please visit https://www.osha.gov.
Doug shared our internal OSHA Compliance Checklist and his summary of how we prepare for inspections:
Ensure regulatory compliance: The main goal of the Compliance department/team is to ensure regulatory compliance. We are working with our locations to stay in compliance with OSHA & EPA Regulations.
We are constantly working to keep our Safety & Health programs as accurate and timely as they can be. Team Member Life Safety is our number 1 priority!
We are currently working on a new Employee Safety Training System and hope to roll it out very soon. The new system should be easier to navigate & manage.
We conduct in-house PSM inspections every 90 to 180 days depending on the facility. We also have General Duty audits. In-house inspections are designed to catch issues before OSHA comes.
We ensure that all required written programs, training records, medical records such as respirator evaluations, PFT Tests & APR Fit Tests, PPE Hazard Assessments and PSM 90 day audit records are maintained.
We have an OSHA Inspection Checklist that a member of management can use as a guide to help ask and answer questions for an OSHA Compliance Officer. Please review the attached Checklist.
