Planning before walking the floor
An audit can be run by internal safety staff, by an outside consultant, or under the direction of counsel, and the choice has consequences. Findings that identify hazards create knowledge, and a later inspection that finds the same hazard unaddressed can be treated more seriously than if no one had looked. OSHA has a stated policy on how it treats voluntary self-audits, but that policy is not the same as a legal privilege. When a lawyer directs an audit for the purpose of giving legal advice, some of its work may be protected, although courts look closely at how it was actually run. Scope, who receives the report, and how findings will be tracked are easier to decide before the audit starts.
What the audit usually examines
Most audits compare written programs with the hazards actually present, such as lockout procedures, machine guarding, or fall protection, along with whatever standards apply to your industry. Injury and illness logs and incident reports are checked for accuracy and for gaps between what happened and what was recorded. Training records are compared with who actually performs the work, including temporary and contract workers, since host employers often share safety responsibility for them. Interviews with workers and supervisors tend to show whether procedures exist only on paper.
Acting on what is found
An audit is only as useful as the follow-through. Each finding should have an owner, a correction plan, and a record that it was fixed, because an open item on an old report is hard to explain later. Serious hazards may need immediate interim measures rather than waiting for a budget cycle. We help set priorities, look at whether any findings call for corrections to injury logs or reports, and consider how the audit should be described if an inspection or a claim follows. For employers with several sites, we also look at whether a problem found at one location is likely to exist at the others.
