Posted By Ashley Williams Active monitoring is "monitoring" that is done in an "active" manner as opposed to the "reactive" form of monitoring ie waiting for it to go wrong!!! Or as is stated in INDG275 "Active monitoring, before things go wrong, involves regular inspection and checking to ensure that your standards are being implemented and management controls are working." Ash ;0)

Posted By Bill Parkinson Philip I generally use the term proactive for active monitoring. Generally this is doing things before they go wrong. Risk assessments can be seen as active monitoring if they are carried out before incidents. Inspections, audits, walkthroughs, observations etc. are all types of active monitoring. You also need to look at the data collected and how this is used. In some places I have worked a simple checklist was developed for the different types and subsequent checks were measured against previous checks (e.g. has the number of tripping hazards/risks reduced since the last inspection). Hope that helps! Bill

Posted By Pete Longworth I've thought abot this before and I have come to the view that ultimately all monitoring is reactive in that the results of the monitoring determine a course of action. Traditionally things like accident and incident reporting have been considered to be reactive monitoring because they monitor failures in the H&S management system. However types of monitoring such as auditing, safety tours, safety sampling, safety surveys all of which are classed as active monitoring, rely on a certain condition being observed as safe or unsafe. From that point of view we are reacting to that condition in what we do next. Either take corrective action when an unsafe condition is observed or leave well alone , or try to continually improve , when everything is observed to be acceptable. Which ever way you look at it the result of the monitoring is a specific reaction which in my view makes it reactive monitoring.

Posted By GT Phillip, Are you referring to people monitoring or equipment monitoring. Smoke / heat detectors if fitted in your home I would suggest is an active monitor. GT