ORC Launches EHS Center of Excellence Wiki

ORC challenges companies, safety and health professionals, academicians, government representatives, labor unions and workers who strive to improve the safety of contract workers to join the ORC EHS Center of Excellence and share your expertise so that others may learn from and build upon your knowledge. While the Center is beginning with a focus on contractor safety information, it will soon grow to include other EHS topics.

Contractor Safety

The increasing use of contractor workers for some of the most dangerous jobs in industry, growing anecdotal evidence that these workers are suffering disproportionate injuries and fatalities, combined with the absence of reliable data, led ORC and other safety leaders to believe that contractor safety was a serious – and largely unrecognized – safety problem.

The Center of Excellence has a wealth of information on contractor safety, and ORC hopes that EHS stakeholders will learn from and contribute to this growing body of knowledge.

For example, the Center has information on the three goals of the 2006 Contractor Safety Summit:

•    Identification of the key barriers to safety performance;
•    Best practices in contractor safety management; and
•    Research topics most critical to improving the safety contract workers.

The Center also offers information on three newly completed research reports that grew out of the Summit, including identifying contractor safety risk; contractor safety prequalification; and metrics to predict contractor safety performance.

ORC invites all stakeholders to visit the Center of Excellence and participate in this effort to break new ground in protecting people from EHS risks.

Visit the Center at http://www.orcehs.org for more information.