SIF prevention: from warning signs to verified safeguards

A practical serious injury and fatality (SIF) prevention checklist for manufacturing leaders, supervisors and employees to examine serious exposure, carry critical actions through, and apply learning across the organization.

Use the questions below with the people who understand the work. An optional conversation with SoIN Safety can help explore the barriers to progress and a useful next step.

1. Where could someone be seriously injured or killed?

Review actual work with employees and supervisors, including production, startup and shutdown, cleaning, maintenance and troubleshooting. Include work with serious-injury potential even when no injury or close call has been reported.

OSHA hazard-identification guidance

What could happen? Describe the hazard or event that could cause a fatal or life-altering injury.
Who could be exposed, and when? Identify the people, tasks and operating conditions involved.
What safeguard concerns need attention? Capture what employees report or observations show about protections that are missing, unreliable, bypassed, difficult to use as intended, or not yet verified.

Record: Task or condition → serious-injury exposure → people exposed → safeguard concern or unknown.

Example: During conveyor jam clearing, unexpected equipment movement could catch or crush the person clearing the jam. The effectiveness of hazardous-energy controls needs verification.

NIOSH hazardous-energy guidance

2. Where else could this exposure exist?

Use the exposure identified in Section 1 to look across other jobs, equipment, lines, shifts, departments and sites. Involve employees and supervisors in potentially affected areas to compare the concern or lesson with their actual work.

Where could a similar serious-injury exposure occur? Look for shared hazards and tasks, including situations where equipment or processes look different.
Who needs to understand and apply the lesson? Include people doing the work on affected shifts, supervisors, maintenance personnel and contractors where relevant.
What needs to be checked locally? Review each area’s tasks, operating conditions and safeguards. Record whether the exposure applies and any safeguard concerns or unknowns.

Record: Potentially affected area/task → how the exposure could occur → people who need the lesson → local safeguard concern or unknown.

Example: A jam-clearing concern on one conveyor prompts a review of potentially affected conveyors and packaging equipment on other lines or sites. Each area checks its own exposure and safeguards.

This emphasis on organization-wide learning aligns with the CSB’s TS USA investigation recommendations. CSB’s TS USA investigation recommendations

3. Who owns the response?

Name a person accountable for coordinating the response, with the authority and leadership support to secure decisions and resources. Involve employees who do the work in developing the response.

OSHA leadership guidance

Who is accountable, and who needs to be involved? Identify the response lead, affected employees and supervisors, and any maintenance, engineering or safety expertise needed.
What protection and actions are needed? Address missing or ineffective safeguards and protect people from the exposure immediately while longer-term controls are developed. Confirm effective protection before the affected work proceeds.
How will commitments be carried through? Give each action a named owner and due date. Set a progress review, a way to escalate barriers and a plan to update affected employees.

Record: Area/exposure → response lead → protective actions → action owners and dates → review and escalation.

Example: An operations manager coordinates the conveyor response with operators and maintenance/engineering. Immediate protection is confirmed, corrective actions receive owners and dates, resource barriers are raised with leadership, and affected employees receive progress updates.

OSHA hazard-control guidance

4. How will we verify protection?

Agree what effective protection must achieve and what evidence will demonstrate it. Involve employees who do the work and people with the technical expertise needed to check the safeguards.

Are safeguards effective in actual work? Define what each safeguard must do and use appropriate inspections, tests or observations to confirm its performance under relevant operating conditions. Conduct checks safely without defeating safeguards or exposing people to the hazard.
Do affected people understand and use the protection? Check with employees across affected shifts and areas that they understand the exposure, safeguards and response to a safeguard failure. Confirm safeguards are usable and used as intended.
How will protection stay effective? Identify inspection and maintenance needs, who will recheck protection and when. Reassess when conditions change. For failed or uncertain checks, prevent exposure while the gap is resolved.

Record: Safeguard and required protection → check, evidence and result → verifier/date → remaining gap and protective action → follow-up owner/timing.

Example: People with appropriate expertise check conveyor guarding and hazardous-energy controls using safe procedures. Operators across affected shifts explain the protections and how to report a problem. Follow-up inspections and maintenance are assigned, and unresolved gaps receive protective action.

OSHA control-verification guidance

OSHA evaluation guidance

Put the questions into practice

SoIN Safety works alongside manufacturing leaders, supervisors and employees to understand barriers to effective protection, put initial changes into practice and strengthen leadership follow-through. Engagements can address a specific exposure, an entire facility or multiple sites.

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