Posted By Merv Newman
J

not entirely sure if I understand your position, but in a manufacturing industry there should be no "safety" budget. For me, safety is a cost of production, of maintenance and of training. Those departments should be required to budget for whatever is required to run the company safely. (your salary/expenses would be part of the human relations budget).

With any luck this should stir up some of my colleagues.

Posted By Patrick Guyomard
Be careful of health and safety budgets - if they are not controlled everyone raids them for some 'good' health and safety reason to top up their own budget. My favourite was a ride on floor sweeper, justification slips and trips - need identified and bought just before a VIP visit.
Have a personal budget for subscriptions etc. but avoid a general safety budget, every department should be building safety in their own budgets as part of a proactive approach. Honest.

Posted By David Thomas
As others are saying, budgets can be very difficult to define in H&S, dependent on the company, its attitude to H&S, and to budgets in general. Without a budget history it must be something that needs looking at on a month by month basis.
One person to get the right side of is the financial controller - they can be very persuasive to those who wish to dump mega-bucks onto your budget for their new equipment.

An example of this was the purchase of a mechanised high reach unit that was required in stores, this was authorised (initially) as H&S as it was dual purpose for the plant electrician to gain access to high lights. Except it was too high in the down position to get through the doorways and is permanantly stuck in stores

Good luck
regards
Dave

Posted By Merv Newman
You could start by asking your boss how much he is budgeting for non-safety next year - cost of litigation, insurance, down time, loss of production .....

Then, if you really want to frighten him/her remember it comes off the bottom line, out of the profit margin. How many widgets would you have to make just to recover the cost of an accident ?

As far as I know there are no widely accepted, accurate figures for the cost of accidents. We usually use (with lots of warnings about difficulty of calculating true figures) an estimate of £3 000 for the first lost day (covers down time, loss of production, adminstration ...) and then £600 per additional day. Eventual litigation cost is impossible to estimate - depends who you are and what you have done.


We have no basis for using these figures - just found them being used as an accounting base by a number of fairly large companies. Others may use different, often much higher, numbers. And that's only the direct costs.