Organization of industrial safety production control

Thousands of enterprises operate in the Republic of Belarus, posing a potential hazard to both the personnel working there and the people living nearby, as well as to the environment.

To address the task of preventing emergency situations and ensuring the readiness of enterprises operating hazardous production and potentially hazardous facilities to localize and eliminate the consequences of accidents and incidents, the Law "On Industrial Safety" (hereinafter referred to as the Law) is in effect in the Republic of Belarus.

Industrial safety requirements encompass all cycles of the production process, including the stages of design, manufacturing, construction, reconstruction, acceptance, installation, commissioning, maintenance, repair, technical inspection and diagnostics, operation, and, when necessary, the conservation and decommissioning of hazardous production and potentially hazardous facilities.

Each industrial safety entity operating hazardous production and/or potentially hazardous facilities must independently carry out production control.

Production control is one of the primary sources of information on the state of industrial safety during the operation of hazardous production and potentially hazardous facilities. It is a key element of the management system, ensuring constant monitoring of safety at the facility, timely informing management, and developing and implementing necessary corrective and preventive actions.

To this end, the head of the enterprise ensures, in the established manner, the presence of a structural unit responsible for carrying out production control (hereinafter referred to as the industrial safety service), or introduces the position of an industrial safety engineer into the staff, or assigns the relevant responsibilities for carrying out production control to a person with higher technical education and training necessary to exercise authority on industrial safety matters, who has passed an examination on industrial safety issues (hereinafter referred to as the responsible person).

In this case, the head of the industrial safety service, as well as persons responsible for carrying out production control, report directly to the head of the enterprise or their deputy responsible for organizing industrial safety (in most enterprises, this is typically the chief engineer).

Article 29 of the Law "On Industrial Safety" allows the head of an industrial safety entity to introduce the position of an industrial safety engineer into the staff for the purpose of assigning him/her the duties of carrying out industrial control over compliance with industrial safety requirements.

Many managers wished to supplement their staff with such a specialist, but did not take into account many important aspects.

An industrial safety engineer is a position, the qualification requirements for which are contained in the first edition of the Unified Qualification Directory of Occupations of Employees (EKS D), approved by the Resolution of the Ministry of Labor of the Republic of Belarus dated December 30, 1999, No. 159. In particular, this document states that to be appointed to this position, an employee must have a specialized education, namely: higher education in the relevant field (type of professional activity). Such education can be obtained today, for example, at the Educational Institution "University of Civil Protection of the Ministry of Emergency Situations of Belarus", where industrial and fire safety engineers are trained. In the absence of the specified education, specialists cannot be appointed to these positions, including on the terms of combining positions or part-time employment.

What should be done if there is no specialist with such education on the company's staff, and there is still a lot of time until the next graduation of young specialists from the University of Civil Protection of the Ministry of Emergency Situations (or until the relevant employee of the entity obtains a second higher education)? Who will carry out industrial control (and this is the responsibility of the head of the entity)? The answer to this question is given in the same Article 29 of the Law, namely: the head of the entity retains the choice, i.e., instead of an industrial safety engineer, the relevant duties can be assigned to a responsible person (who has higher technical education in any field and the necessary training).

Undoubtedly, higher quality and more comprehensive industrial safety control at an enterprise can be achieved by introducing a separate position into the staff ("industrial safety engineer"), as the organization and conduct of industrial safety control is the primary job for this specialist. Meanwhile, assigning the duties of industrial safety control to officials is carried out without relieving them of their main work (according to their occupied position), i.e., the manager assigns additional duties to such persons, which require additional time to perform, and not every specialist has such time available, nor always.

Current legislation in the field of industrial safety does not establish a clear regulation for conducting industrial safety control for an enterprise, as was previously defined in the "Rules for the organization and implementation of industrial safety control for compliance with industrial safety requirements at hazardous production facilities," approved by the Resolution of the Ministry of Emergency Situations of the Republic of Belarus dated June 28, 2000, No. 11 (the document lost its force on August 10, 2016, due to the adoption of a new Law).

Enterprise managers must establish their own requirements for the implementation of industrial safety control by approving a relevant regulation on the procedure for organizing and implementing industrial safety control in the field of industrial safety (hereinafter referred to as the Regulation), taking into account the applied technology and technical features of the operated hazardous production facilities and equipment, which is developed based on the model regulation on the organization and implementation of industrial safety control in the field of industrial safety, approved by the Resolution of the Ministry of Emergency Situations of the Republic of Belarus dated July 15, 2016, No. 37.

Having studied the main tasks and components of industrial safety control, it is worth noting that the functions of industrial safety engineers or responsible persons are not limited to controlling the safe operation of facilities, but include a number of other measures, such as:

control over the timely conduct of necessary tests, technical inspections, and technical diagnostics of equipment and devices used at hazardous production and potentially hazardous facilities, repair and calibration of measuring instruments;

development and revision (in conjunction with heads of departments) of industrial safety instructions, other local regulatory legal acts of enterprises containing industrial safety requirements;

development and submission for management review of work plans and measures for ensuring industrial safety, including plans for accident and incident localization and mitigation measures;

participation in the technical investigation of the causes of accidents and incidents;

analysis of the causes of accidents and incidents that occurred at the facilities;

preparation for industrial safety expertise of hazardous production facilities;

informing employees about changes in industrial safety legislation;

organization and control of training and knowledge testing on industrial safety issues for enterprise employees involved in the operation of hazardous production facilities and (or) potentially hazardous facilities.

It should be noted that, unfortunately, almost no inspection by Gospromnadzor is complete without remarks on the procedure for conducting and (or) organizing industrial safety production control.

Recently, achieving industrial safety has become an increasingly complex task due to constantly changing working conditions and production processes. Safety laws and regulations are constantly being improved, creating safer workplaces. Employers must understand and adapt to these changes, as well as inform their employees about them and ensure that they can act in accordance with them.

In conclusion, we would like to remind you that according to Article 29 of the Law, information on the organization of industrial safety production control must be submitted no later than December 25 of the current year:

to the territorial administration of Gospromnadzor – by industrial safety entities without departmental subordination;

to republican bodies of state administration and other state organizations subordinate to the Government of the Republic of Belarus, the central office of the State Committee of Forensic Examinations – by their subordinate (included in the composition, system) industrial safety entities.

Vitebsk Regional Department of Gospromnadzor