The Occupational Safety and Health Administration announced it has implemented the OSHA Weighting System for fiscal year 2020, according to www.osha.gov. The system will encourage the appropriate allocation of resources to support OSHA’s balanced approach of promoting safe and healthy workplaces, as well as continue to develop and support a management system that focuses enforcement activities on critical and strategic areas where OSHA’s efforts can be most effective.
Under the current enforcement weighting system, OSHA weights certain inspections based on the time taken to complete the inspection or—in some cases—the inspection’s effects on workplace safety and health. The OSHA Weighting System recognizes time is not the only factor to assess; factors such as types of hazards inspected and abated, as well as effective targeting, influence the effects on workplace safety and health.
The OSHA Weighting System replaces the current enforcement weighting system, which was initiated during fiscal year 2015. The new system is based on an evaluation of the existing criteria and a working group’s recommendations regarding improvements. OSHA has been running the new weighting system to confirm data integrity.
The system will continue to weight inspections but will do so based on factors such as agency priorities and the effects of inspections rather than simply on a time-weighted basis. The new approach is meant to reinforce OSHA’s balanced approach to occupational safety and health and will incorporate the three major work elements performed by the field: enforcement activity, essential enforcement support functions (such as severe injury reporting and complaint resolution) and compliance assistance efforts.
The OSHA Weighting System takes effect Oct. 1.
