Strategic choices in safety systems of complex public institutions: from setting the risk analysis techniques to conservative and ameliorative quality management

OS&H appears to be particularly complex in the case of large public facilities (Ministries, public offices, ...) open to the patrons, due to a number of typical characteristics, such as the often very large number of workers and patrons and the wide range of patrons’ typologies, the age and historical/artistic value of many Italian settlements, the common possibility of internal/external interference of functional volumes. As a consequence, the usual approaches to the OH&S problems in industrial activities or secondary educational institutions can prove quite inadequate in many cases. The task of Occupational Risk Assessment and Management analysts becomes even more demanding where the attention is focused on activities which are institutionally involved in both high degree university education and in advanced research, the latter carried on in laboratories where also special devices, often of original or somehow modified design, are used. On the basis of literature findings, no very helpful suggestion based on real case histories are available, and in many cases the approach is limited to general purpose references on a limited number of Hazard Factors, integrated with spots on demand interventions, whilst both Prevention through Design general approaches to the OS&H problems, and quality approaches (e.g. according to OHSAS 18000) in the Residual Risk Assessment and Management are not common. The present thesis discusses with particular reference to Universities in general and to the Italian situation in particular, the results achieved in a multidisciplinary work -made exhaustive thanks to the presence of highly qualified experts among the staff- carried out in cooperation by Politecnico di Torino and Università degli Studi di Torino. The most important outcome was the definition of a Guideline for the Occupational Risk Assessment and Management of workers and users of large public facilities, specially conceived to provide for each involved person an effective evaluation of the actual residual exposure to the total number of Hazard Factors, systematically identified by means of a consistent Job Analysis. The Guideline, focalized in particular on the universities, stresses the paramount importance of a detailed and unambiguous definition, since the very first step of the study, of the Line and Staff Organization, upon which to base the discussion of the three basic Occupational Safety topics in the following hierarchic order: a) the workplace general safety characteristics, b) the workers OS&H along their activity in terms of involved residual risks, taking into account the available equipment (tools, machines and fittings), and c) the quality management of the OS&H system. The technique, carefully tested both in its general approach and in a number of sub-applications for special aspects, can moreover play an effective role in the continuous process of assisted training of the subjects operating in the various Areas (Departments, Services, ... ) who, thanks to the detailed knowledge of their area, will be able to provide a capillary contribution in the phases of Hazards Factors Identification, and of suitable OH&S conditions -as defined in the Risk Management process- conservation and improvement. This PhD thesis, analyzes in depth the applicative phases and sub-phases of the proposed model with some examples of real cases. In particular, the thesis stresses the essential need of following the hierarchical phases of approach to provide an exhaustive management tool for Occupational Risk Assessment and Management.