Avetta Partners with the National Safety Council to Introduce the Safety Maturity Index™, a Revolutionary Step Forward in Contractor Safety
September 17 2024 - 9:00AM
Avetta®, the leading provider of supply chain risk management
(SCRM) software, has announced a partnership with the National
Safety Council (NSC) to launch the Safety Maturity Index™ (SMI).
The new index offers a systems-based approach to target health and
safety weaknesses within the supply chain to help avoid serious
injuries and fatalities (SIFs).
Traditional contractor safety models have lacked leading
indicators and actionable insights needed for organizations to make
a transformational change in their contractor safety results.
Avetta and NSC combined 15 years of NSC research, data from
Avetta’s global contractor network, and insights from
forward-thinking companies like Avetta clients, Entergy and
Cargill, to design the SMI. The SMI goes beyond traditional metrics
by identifying, assessing, and surfacing the maturity of the
contractor's organizational use of their safety management systems
to ensure a safer working environment. The index further focuses on
risk management, enabling a comprehensive and accurate safety
evaluation to verify a contractor’s Safety Management System
(SMS).
“Our partnership represents joint dedication to innovation in
the contractor safety space,” said Don Dama, Executive Vice
President of Sales and Marketing of the National Safety Council.
“The Council’s research combined with Avetta’s experience and
ability to scale this solution represents a significant step
forward in our industry. By offering a holistic approach to monitor
contractors’ safety and maturity, we empower the industry to deploy
more effective systems and safeguards to reduce SIFs in the
future.”
Grounded in recognized industry standards such as ISO 45001 and
ANSI Z-10, SMI scores are weighted based on contractor findings,
evidence and verification methods, and are calculated using a 0-100
grading scale across five primary categories:
- Safety Leadership & Structure: The
evaluation of leadership practices, incentives, and structures
designed to produce positive safety outcomes.
- Hazard Identification & Controls: The
ability for an organization and its workers to properly identify
potential SIF hazards and deploy the proper controls and safeguards
for these hazards.
- Worker Training & Competency: The ability
for an organization to identify worker roles, training needs, and
verify competency based on role and work type.
- Incident Management & Response: An
organization’s systems, methods, and practices used to investigate,
learn from, and respond to incidents.
- Improvements & Communications: The
communication tools and processes used to distribute new safety
improvements and knowledge across managers and employees.
The SMI is built on statistically relevant questions across
these categories that have been proven over time to be leading
indicators, allowing organizations to leverage actionable insights
to manage risk, prevent accidents, and continually improve
safety.
Research has demonstrated the presence or absence of SMS
procedures and practices is the strongest leading indicator for
significant improvements in an organization’s safety
performance.
“For decades, contractor prequalification has focused on
historical performance and policy audits,” said Taylor Allis, CPO
of Avetta. “This standard needs to evolve as it's been proven that
past performance isn’t a reliable indicator of future safety. By
partnering with NSC, we’re shifting contractor safety interactions
from compliance-based ones to improvement-focused discussions,
charting a new course in contractor safety.”
The SMI will be available to select North American clients in
early 2025. Avetta and NSC will also provide access to a membership
package that includes safety improvement tools and resources to
support contractors in the Avetta network. To learn more about the
new SMI and available offerings, visit
https://avetta.com/safety-maturity.
About AvettaThe Avetta SaaS platform helps
clients manage supply chain risk and their suppliers to
become more qualified for jobs. For the hiring clients in our
network, we offer the world’s largest supply chain risk management
network to manage supplier safety, sustainability, worker
competency and performance. We perform contractor prequalification
and worker competency management across major industries, all over
the globe, including construction, energy, facilities, high tech,
manufacturing, mining and telecom.
About the National Safety CouncilThe National
Safety Council is America’s leading nonprofit safety advocate – and
has been for 110 years. As a mission-based organization, we work to
eliminate the leading causes of preventable death and injury,
focusing our efforts on the workplace and roadways. We create a
culture of safety to not only keep people safer at work, but also
beyond the workplace so they can live their fullest lives.
Media Contactavetta@hoffman.com