Examination of Formal Safety Management System Impact in a Liquefied Natural Gas Company

This study was aimed at examining the impact of a formal safety management system (SMS) in a liquefied natural gas company. A 5-point Likert questionnaire ranging from “strongly disagree to strongly agree” questions developed by Flins & Burns was used to evaluate workers’ perception to the impact of safety management system in the organisation. The OHSAS 18001 internal audit checklist was also used to assess the level of compliance of the organization to the requirements of the SMS. Secondary data was obtained from document reviews and safety reports of the case study. The data was collated and subjected to descriptive statistics, t-test and row and column contingency(R&C) table to evaluate the relationship between safety performance and compliance. For compliance to SMS; General requirements, 91%; Health and Safety Policy, 95%; Planning, 93%, Implementation and Operation, 98%; Audit, 98%; and Management Review, 93%. The overall average level of compliance was 95%. 100 respondents participated in the questionnaire, 64 males and 36 females: 68 technical personnel and 32 nontechnical respondents. Descriptive analysis of employees’ perception resulted in; Safety satisfaction and feedback, 4.113; Training and competence, 4.182; Safety reporting and investigation, 4.212; Work Duties/Pressure, 3.989; Management commitment, 4.098; Safety communication, 4.171; and Emergency response and planning, 4.126. t-test indicated that there was no significant difference for perception of males and females, and perception of technical and non-technical employees since p > 0.05. R & C contingency table was used to evaluate the relationship between safety performance and safety compliance. The result showed that there is significant difference between safety compliance and safety performance since X2calc < X2tab. This outcome aligns with similar previous works at different case studies. Therefore, it is opined that the implementation of a formal Safety management system will continuously improve safety performance. Hence, the impact of a formal safety management system cannot be overemphasized. The practice of health and safety has evolved overtime, as a matter of common sense in several industries. However, this study opines that the implementation of a formal safety management system requirements is instrumental to a sustainable continuous improvement in organizational safety performance. The study therefore encourages organisations to consider the safety management system certification.