In our latest installment of Ask the Expert, brought to you by Avetta as part of EHS Technology Week, we talk to Scott DeBow, CSP, ARM, Principal of Health/Safety & Environment for Avetta, about using technology to manage EHS risks.
Q: What are the commonly missed business risks that even experienced safety leaders often overlook?
Experienced safety professionals often overlook how important it is to take a systems-wide approach to better understanding how their business operates, and how decisions made “upstream” in a business process can multiply risk “downstream” at the operational end. For example, understanding the impact of how goals and objectives in say the procurement process can reduce capacity to manage risk downstream, where operations teams inherit the decisions made by others earlier in the process, and often outside of the actual physical work environment. Understanding this and considering “how can my voice better help our organization understand and manage risk” is important, and it can help a safety professional have a better “Up and Out” perspective of decisions, influences and dependencies in the business environment, and the…
