Proposal of a quali-quantitative assessment model for health and safety in small and medium enterprises

Abstract

The identification, assessment and reduction of risks is one of the most important elements of health and safety at work. Nowadays, safety at work is becoming an Italian and a globally relevant ethical and technical problem. Risk can be assessed with different methods: qualitative, quantitative or quali-quantitative; while qualitative models are often too simplistic, in turn many times quantitative models are difficult to implement in small and medium enterprises (SMEs). The aim of this work is to present a new practical assessment model that tries to overcome the mentioned difficulties. Beyond its description, the paper also proposes an application study made in an international firm production plant to validate its results. © 2009 WIT Press.