Safety Audit Program

About the Program

Category: Risk and Emergency Management (Best in Category)

Year: 2012

Every year, counties find themselves paying out millions in losses from collisions, employee injuries, property losses and liability claims among others. Over the past 5 years the average expected (incurred) cost of all claims for Chesterfield County Government and Schools is $7,628,931 per year. Risk Management of Chesterfield County identified the need to significantly revise its safety audit program to strengthen the audit protocols used, tracking of the findings and follow-up. The county introduced it's Safety Audit Program to prevent losses at over 300 county facilities. The program established a strict protocol regarding the auditing process which allowed the county to prioritize facilities and receive valuable feedback from the auditor. To strengthen this process, the Safety Audit Program enforces that follow-up audits be scheduled on a case-by-case basis. The strong point of this program is that all information from each audit is systematically entered into CS STARS, the county's risk management software that allows them to identify strong points, weak points, priorities, and trends. As a result of the protocol implementation, Risk Management of Chesterfield County now has a 100% audit completion rate. Since it's start, the overall trend for regulatory and internal policy compliance has improved.