Executive Summary

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY This is a BC Municipal Safety Association Certificate of Recognition (COR) certification audit for the Regional District of Okanagan Similkameen conducted by Dean Sinclair, RPF, CRSP of DCS Consulting Ltd. The audit took place on site April 22 - 26 and April 29 - 30, 2013. The applicable WorkSafeBC account number is 112594 and the classification unit is 753004 - Local Government and Related Operations. The audit document utilized was the BC Municipal Safety Association Large Company Electronic Audit Tool and covered all 8 elements: 1. Organizational Commitment 2. Programs and Procedures 3. Hazard Identification, Risk Assessment and Control 4. Training, Education and Certification 5. Inspections 6. Investigations of Incidents / Accidents 7. Program Administration 8. Joint Health and Safety Committee The Injury Management audit was within the scope of this contract and Element 9 of the audit document was included. The Regional District of Okanagan-Similkameen (RDOS) is located in southern BC and covers approximately 10,400km2 in an area from Manning Park to the west, Peachland to the north, Anarchist Mountain to the east and the United States border to the south. RDOS is responsible for managing and providing a variety of services to a population of approximately 55,000, including economic development, parks and recreation, emergency services and development such as construction. Unique to the Regional District are the peripheral operations associated with Parks and Recreation and Volunteer Fire Departments. The RDOS takes a very hands-off approach to these operations and is not directly involved with the associated employees even though they are employed by RDOS. The Regional District funds 8 Parks and Recreation Commissions who are responsible for ice rinks, community facilities, playgrounds, pools and other recreational assets. As was the case during the 2010 certification audit, the RDOS board appoints the recreation commissions who are responsible for the day-to-day operations of the commissions, but the workforce is employed (paid) by the RDOS and not the commissions. As the employer, the RDOS is responsible for managing the safety of the Parks and Recreation Commission employees, which does not currently meet the requirements. The nature of this relationship has exposed the RDOS should an incident occur. Similarly, the fire departments also act independently in terms of safety management with no guidance or active involvement from RDOS. Neither of the 2 departments audited used the RDOS safety management system, both relying on existing, out of date systems. A recommendation was made in the 2010 certification audit to develop a single safety management system that applied to all Regional District operations, including peripheral operations. Action #7 from the 2010 COR Certification audit action plan states:

A single safety management system should be implemented across all operations where Regional District employee work. Safety Programs should be consolidated, user friendly and readily accessible to all employees. At a minimum, it should include statements about safety responsibilities, written procedures, training and instruction of workers, hazard identification and control, workplace inspections, investigation of incidents and accidents, responsibilities of the joint Health and Safety Committee, and program administration. Update the current RDOS program and roll out to peripheral
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operations.
It was given a B Priority, (moderate - to be completed within 4-8 months) with target implementation date of February 28, 2011. There were no indications during the 2013 audit that any aspect of this significant recommendation have been considered or implemented. The Regional District of Okanagan Similkameen employs approximately 220 people in a wide variety of occupations in 8 departments. Descriptions of responsibilities are from the RDOS website : Office of the CAO: (CAO ~7 employees) - The Chief Administrators Office is responsible for provides legislative and administrative services and support to the Boards, their committees, other departments and the public. Finance (~8 employees) - This department is responsible for the preparation of the annual operating budget that establishes the tax rate for each service the Regional District provides. Human Resources (1 employee) - The Human Resources Department focuses on the Regional Districts most valuable asset - our employees. Through innovation, communication, collaboration and partnership we can provide an outstanding workforce and working environment Information Services (IS, ~5 employees) - Information services staff provide a wide variety of services including: GIS analysis, maintenance and updates of computer applications and network and server support. Development Services (DS, ~16 employees) - This department is responsible for planning for and regulating development in the Regional District. Services include bylaw enforcement and building inspections. Public Works (PW, ~27 employees) - There are 2 divisions in public works. Engineering which is responsible for providing engineering advice to the RDOS board, and planning, budgeting, designing and constructing capital infrastructure projects. Operations manages the water and wastewater treatment facilities and distribution systems, solid waste and pest control programs. Community Services (CS, ~156 employees) - CS is responsible for the Regional Emergency Planning program, including the operations of 7 volunteer fire departments. CS also funds 8 RDOS appointed Recreation Commissions and maintains community assets such as ice rinks, swimming pools, fields and parks. According to audit guidelines each department must be sampled. For the purposes of the audit, officebased departments with similar hazards can be combined; however, departments with higher hazards, such as by-law enforcement, building inspections, surveying, animal control, cant be combined and must be audited independently. For the purposes of the audit, the following departments were audited: CAO+: This combined the departments of Office of the CAO, Finance, IS and HR. DS: Development Services PW: Public works. All public works divisions were included. CS (including Parks and Recreation): This department include the Martin Street office-based RDSO staff and the Parks and Recreation employees associated with the Recreation Commissions. VFD: Although part of Community Services, the volunteer fire fighting operations were split into their own department as per audit requirements. RDOS employees face a myriad of working environments, many of which are under the scrutiny of the taxpaying public. RDOS employees at the Head office and Recreation staff are the transactional public face of the City and are based at the Head Office on Martin Street in Penticton and the Recreation Centres. These employees deal with the public directly on a daily basis and could be considered as the face of the District. Maintenance crews work in the field to maintain the infrastructure, such as the drinking water and wastewater systems, water treatment, park and building maintenance. The working environment of these employees is mostly outdoors and hazards change frequently as they change sites and tasks. Training for maintenance crews is essential to ensure they have the tools and skills to ensure they can work safely at all times.

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The RDOS has a complex safety management system in place consisting of many components. The Occupational Health and Safety Manual document is common to all departments, except the fire departments and provides the framework for the key components of the safety program. The sections of the program cover the 8 elements identified in the audit. Supplementing the Program are numerous generic Safe Work Procedures that provide basic operational guidelines for specific tasks, such as confined space entry and operating mobile equipment. Both fire departments audited were using outdated policies and procedures specific to each department. The policies and operational guidelines are not consistent with the RDOS program and no longer accurately reflect or represent the current safety management environment and as such both departments scored poorly in the audit. Supporting the entire system and vast amount of documentation is the RDOS network and Intranet site. The common documents are available directly from the Health and Safety section of the intranet. Departmental documents are available on the various shared network drives, but there did not appear to be a standard directory structure in use and some people had minor difficulty finding information when requested. The peripheral operations maintained documentation mostly in hardcopy and the intranet and network resources were not utilized to the potential. As per audit requirements, a representative sample of interviews with managers (8), supervisors (12) and workers (25) were conducted. In all, 25 of 220 employees were selected and interviewed based on length of service and job(s) performed. Documentation reviews and observations were also conducted to verify information required in the audit document. Audit protocol requires observations to be conducted at 33% of normal, active sites, with the sites audited being changed each year so that over the 3 year audit cycle, all sites are visited. In the information provided, 20 sites were identified. The requirements to pass the audit are for an overall score of eighty percent (80%) or better and not less than fifty percent (50%) in any of the Elements. Scoring on the different elements ranged from a low of 18% on Element 7 - Program Administration, to a high of 89% on Element 1 - Organizational Commitment. The RDOS scored 554 points out of a possible 1000 points, or 55% overall. Three elements scored less than 50%, and the overall score was less than 80%, meaning this audit has not achieved the minimum requirements. This score is a significant drop from the score of 81% in the 2010 audit. The reduction in score is due to a combination of factors; however the most significantly is due to the fact the safety program is not pro-actively managed on an ongoing basis. Other factors may include: Few recommendations from the 2010 audit were implemented, particularly where peripheral operations are involved. Many recommendations made in 2010 were made again in this audit. Updates over the past 3 years to the audit protocol resulted in minor changes to the scoring and guidelines. Volunteer Fire Departments are now required to be audited as a standalone group/department and not combined with other departments. In the 2010 audit the fire departments were included with the rest of the community services department and any deficiencies were watered down by the other

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community services operations. Positive aspects of the safety management system worth noting are; A strong awareness of safety amongst all departments. Foundation documents and policies are in place and readily available. Safety is a topic on the agenda for most meetings. Continuous improvement opportunities were identified during the course of this audit and recommendations have been made and included as part of this audit report for your consideration. Some of the key recommendations to consider are those also made in 2010: Develop and implement a single, clear, complete safety management system for all RDOS employees, especially those employed in peripheral operations of the Parks and Recreation Commissions and Fire Departments. The existing RDOS system would be the simplest option. A structure to support the safety management system would need to be put in place including clear lines of responsibility and reporting to the RDOS board. (directly from 2010 audit report) Consider providing a dedicated safety resource person to the fire departments to be responsible for developing standards, operating procedures and overall safety management. Although there are few incidents, the ones that do occur are not tracked well and there is no consistent reporting mechanism at any level for leading (e.g. annual reviews completed, number of monthly safety meetings held, safety observations made, inspections completed on time, etc) and lagging (incident statistics) indicators. Processes must be developed and implemented for regular reporting to all levels in the organization on leading and lagging indicators performance. New recommendations to consider from the 2013 audit include: Providing support to the Joint Health and Safety committees at the volunteer fire departments to ensure committees are established, trained and functioning as per WorkSafeBC requirements. Develop a district wide strategic safety plan with annual goals and objectives and track progress on the goals regularly. Thank-you for allowing me to conduct this audit. I look forward to seeing the results from implementation of the recommendations and a renewed commitment by the Regional District of Okanagan Similkameen to protect their workers through the continued development and implementation of an effective safety management system. Regards, Dean Sinclair, RPF, CRSP DCS Consulting Ltd. dcsconsulting@telus.net

Date: May 27, 2013

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