Managing Safety: Challenges Ahead (In 2 Volumes)

Occupational Safety and health is centre stage in this globalised competitive economy. Safety considerations have often been the decisive factors in closely contested market opportunities. Safety, as such, has been important both in relation to natural hazards and the manmade activity generated hazards. Realising importance of safety, the Institution of Engineers (India) has set up the Safety and Quality Forum. The main objective of the Forum is to focus attention on issues relating to safety and quality; The main objective of the Forum is to focus and local bodies on steps necessary to ensure safety in all engineering aspects, Initial observations of the Forum indicate that safety concerns have been overlooked in most of the work places- at design, fabrication, production and operation stages. The Forum decided to focus attention on safety at the national level on a regular periodic basis. The best course considered for such a focus was a Conference that offered an opportunity for thinkers, policy makers, and professionals to interact and arrive at a synthesis. Such a synthesis provided important inputs for planning safety concerns at the national level. The first ever Safety Conference at the national level with title “Managing Safety: Challenges Ahead” is the first step in this direction. The conference was to deliberate on the theme “Safety and Hazard Control”. The conference attracted over 75 experience based original papers, dealing with different aspects of safety; and covering different sectors of activities. The Conference provided an important platform for presentation and discussions on recent development in the theoretical and practical aspects of safety and hazard control. The Conference also covered various aspects of inter-disciplinary areas of research and application that brought together all fields of engineering from traditional to the most technologically advanced. Cross-fertilization of ideas was instrumental in identifying the major conclusions indicating areas of concern. The Safety covered various sectors of economic development, for example, industry, construction, transportation, energy and mining. As Tsunami was recent phenomena experienced in India, special attention was focused on “Reconstruction after Tsunami”, wherein experts presentations were also made on occupational safety and health issues during recovery and rehabilitation.