Introduction to Fire Safety Management

6.5.3 Developing a safe system of work
The development of a safe system of work for a work 
activity requires an adequate level of resources to be 
committed. The level of resources required will refl ect 
the complexity of the operation, those that will be 
involved and the resources available.
One key area in the development of a safe system 
of work is to gather suffi cient information from a variety 
of sources. Table 6.1 identifi es such sources of informa-
tion and provides a brief overview of the information that 
may be provided.
Once the information has been gathered the develop-
ment of the system of work will need to be coordinated 
and recorded. The responsibility for this task rests with 
the employer or responsible person. Assistance of a 
competent person will on many occasions be required, 
so that the coordination of the team producing the 
SSOW and the development of the system refl ect the 
preventive and protective measures required by law.
The competent person is likely to have knowledge 
of a variety of techniques for analysing the operation 
including:
➤
Job safety analysis (JSA)
➤
Hazard and operability study (HAZOP)
➤
Fault tree analysis (FTA)
➤
Failure modes and effects analysis (FMEA).
The last three may assist in preparing the safe system of 
work, particularly when the operation may have a high 
loss potential.
The JSA technique is frequently used to 
assist in the development of a system for a 
variety of operations and includes the follow-
ing steps:
Select
the job to be analysed
Record
the component parts of the 
job in chronological order
Examine
each component part to 
determine the risk of harm
Develop
control measures for each 
step to reduce the risk of 
harm