Creating a Quality OHS Management Plan Template (pt 4)

This is part 4 of our template design series. We are examining principles of template design and how these have influenced our product offering. In this article, we will continue to case study our OHS Management Plan product and the way the principles of “Assisting Understanding” and “Considering Events” impacted the design. We hope they prove helpful.

The ‘Designing a Quality Safety Management Plan’ Series

So far we have looked at issues of purpose and currency, critical questions that need answering, and the design principles of ‘Constrained Focus’ and ‘Adjustable Rigidity’.

As we now move into two fresh principal areas, it is wise to remind ourselves that the minefield of compliance that is OHS/WHS has largely been created because people forget the obvious. Systems exist because familiarity breeds laziness. When designing templates, we have to guard ourselves against the same tendencies.

For this reason, even though these principles might seem obvious, we need to intentionally keep them in mind:

1. Assisting Understanding via Presentation
2. Considering Events and Consequences Carefully

Designing Management Plan Reports to Assist Understanding

One routinely experienced design question is whether or not to represent an object in isolation, or with another object alongside. An example can be found in our OHS Management Plan template solution.

In this situation, we chose to represent OHS Monitoring and OHS Auditing within close proximity to each other, as there was a significant relationship between them. At first glance this may seem obvious, but there has been thought behind the presentation.

Weighing OHS Management Events and Consequences Carefully

The OHS events that take place on your work site are the primary drivers behind the need for WHS and OHS templates. They are potentially fatal, and even when safety is taken care of, these remain an ever present financial and compliance factor in your operations.  Event consideration is significant!

In template design, events need to accommodate a variety of possibilities: These include, but are not limited to:

1. Who is taking action,
2. What they are doing,
3. Who and what they are influencing,
4. What communications are required, and
5. What flow on consequences must be planned.

Events also have causality and sub-event potential. In other words, an action may cause another event to take place, or an action may be part of a larger event. Of course a third potential also exists, that an action both causes an event and is part of another. We hope you can appreciate the potential complexity.

An example of this, is where in our OHS Management Plan product, the event of an injury typically results in first aid taking place. Similarly, the event of an injury is also part of the larger incident and injury investigation event.

Please call 1800 304 336 with any questions or unusual requests you might have. We look forward to your joining our ever-growing satisfied client base. Alternatively, you can access a detailed product explanation, and purchase here.