BCSP ASP key terms

The shared values, beliefs, and behaviors that determine how an organization's members actually manage risk day to day, including what leaders reward, what workers feel free to report, and how incidents are treated.

A process that observes workers performing tasks, records safe and at-risk behaviors, and gives feedback to encourage safer habits. It supplements, but never replaces, engineering controls and management system fixes.

An approach that treats error as a normal, predictable result of human limitations and workplace conditions, so fixes focus on defense layers, task design, and error recovery rather than blaming individuals.

The practice of eliminating or reducing hazards during the design and planning stages of facilities, processes, equipment, and work methods, when changes are cheapest and most effective.

An organized set of policies, procedures, responsibilities, and review activities that an organization uses to identify hazards, control risk, and improve safety performance over time.

A four-step improvement cycle: plan the change and set objectives, carry it out, check results against objectives, then act by standardizing what worked or correcting what did not.

A proactive measure of preventive activity, such as completed inspections, training hours, or closed corrective actions, that signals future safety performance rather than recording harm already done.

A measure of outcomes that have already occurred, such as injury rates, lost workdays, or incident counts. Useful for confirming trends but unable to predict the next failure.

A scheduled, top-level evaluation of the safety management system's suitability, adequacy, and effectiveness, resulting in decisions about resources, objectives, and needed changes.

A condition, source, or activity with the potential to cause harm to people, property, or the environment. A hazard exists whether or not anyone is exposed to it at a given moment.

The combination of the likelihood that a hazard will cause harm and the severity of that harm. Risk is expressed qualitatively or quantitatively and changes as exposure and controls change.

The systematic process of identifying hazards, evaluating the likelihood and severity of harm, and determining whether existing controls are adequate or additional action is needed.

A grid that plots likelihood against severity to assign a risk level to each hazard, helping teams rank which risks need attention first.

The risk that remains after existing controls have been applied. It must be compared with the organization's risk criteria to decide whether further reduction is required.

As Low As Reasonably Practicable, a principle holding that risk should be reduced until the cost of further reduction is grossly disproportionate to the benefit gained.

A ranked order of control strategies, from elimination and substitution through engineering and administrative controls to personal protective equipment, used to select the most effective feasible protection first.

A step-by-step examination of a task that breaks it into stages, identifies hazards at each stage, and specifies controls before work begins.

A structured method for tracing an incident past immediate causes to the underlying management, design, or organizational conditions that allowed it to happen, so recurrences can be prevented.

A team-based technique that lists each way a component or process step can fail, rates the severity, likelihood, and detectability of that failure, and prioritizes corrective action.

A written authorization that verifies specified precautions are in place before high-risk work such as hot work, confined space entry, or line breaking begins.

An energy control procedure in which hazardous energy sources are isolated, locked, and tagged by authorized employees, then verified, so equipment cannot start during service or maintenance.

The process of measuring or estimating how much of a hazard, whether chemical, physical, or biological, a worker actually contacts, considering concentration, duration, and route of entry.

A five-phase instructional design model (analysis, design, development, implementation, evaluation) used to build safety training that matches identified performance gaps rather than assumed needs.

A training evaluation framework measuring reaction (how learners felt), learning (knowledge gained), behavior (on-the-job application), and results (safety or business outcomes).

A short, focused safety discussion held with a work crew immediately before a task, covering that day's hazards, the controls to be used, and questions from workers.

Training designed around defined performance standards, where learners must demonstrate the knowledge and skill required for a task rather than simply attend a session.

The OSH Act provision requiring employers to furnish a workplace free of recognized hazards likely to cause death or serious physical harm, even when no specific standard applies.

An OSHA regulatory limit on the airborne concentration of a substance to which a worker may be exposed, typically averaged over an eight-hour shift.

Immediately Dangerous to Life or Health: an atmospheric concentration that poses an immediate threat of severe health effects, irreversible harm, or impaired ability to escape.

The requirement for covered employers to record and report work-related injuries and illnesses that meet specific criteria, using forms such as the OSHA 300 log.

A policy allowing OSHA to cite a controlling employer who did not create a hazard but had authority and responsibility to correct it on a shared worksite.

The OSHA rule requiring chemical manufacturers to classify and label hazards, provide safety data sheets, and train exposed workers on the chemicals they use.

In environmental management, aspects are elements of an organization's activities or products that interact with the environment; impacts are the resulting changes, whether beneficial or adverse.

A structured framework of policy, planning, operational controls, monitoring, and review that an organization uses to manage its environmental aspects and meet its compliance obligations.

Reducing or eliminating waste and emissions at the source through process change, material substitution, or efficiency, rather than treating or disposing of them after they are generated.

The Resource Conservation and Recovery Act, the federal law governing the generation, storage, transportation, treatment, and disposal of hazardous and non-hazardous solid waste.

The Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act, which establishes cleanup authority and liability for releases of hazardous substances and created the Superfund program.

Operating so that current needs are met without compromising the resources and conditions available to future generations, balancing environmental, social, and economic performance.