Occupational risk prevention plan

What is the occupational risk prevention plan?

Article 16.1 of Law 31/1995 defines the prevention plan as the instrument through which the company’s preventive activity is integrated into its general management system and its occupational risk prevention policy is established. It must be approved by management, adopted by the entire organizational structure, and made known to all employees. It is not a document of the prevention service, but of the company.

Article 2 of Royal Decree 39/1997 specifies its minimum content: identification of the company, activity, number and characteristics of the centers and the staff; organizational structure with functions and responsibilities in prevention and communication channels; organization of production, processes and practices relevant to prevention; organization of prevention, with the preventive modality chosen and the representative bodies; and policy, objectives and goals, with the human, technical, material and economic resources available.

The same regulation clarifies that the essential tools for managing and implementing the plan are risk assessment and preventive activity planning. Therefore, the plan does not contain the assessment or specific measures; rather, it describes the system that generates and maintains them. For companies with up to 50 employees that do not carry out activities listed in Annex I of the Regulation, the plan, assessment, and planning can be included in a single, concise, and easily understandable document.

Differences between prevention plan, risk assessment and preventive planning

The three documents are cited together in the regulations and are frequently confused or merged without criteria.

• Prevention plan. It describes the system: who does what, with what resources, and under what policy. It is stable and is reviewed when the organization changes.
• Risk assessment. Identifies hazards and evaluates the risks of each job. It is a diagnostic assessment and is reviewed when conditions change or damage occurs.
• Preventive activity planning. It organizes the measures derived from the assessment with deadlines, responsible parties, and resources. It is the action plan and is continuously updated.

Practical rule: the plan addresses how the company manages prevention; the assessment, what risks exist; the planning, what will be done, when, and by whom. A plan that merely reproduces legal principles without describing the actual organization fails to fulfill its purpose.

How to develop and implement the prevention plan

Developing a safety plan requires understanding the actual organization, not just the theoretical organizational chart: how decisions affecting safety are made, who purchases equipment, who hires staff, who designs processes, and who supervises the work. The INSST technical guide on integrating prevention proposes starting with existing units and functions and assigning the corresponding preventive tasks to each.

The usual phases are:

1. Define the preventive policy and objectives with the explicit commitment of management.
2. Describe the organizational structure and assign preventive functions and responsibilities to each hierarchical level, from management to middle management and workers.
3. Choose and justify the preventive organization method and document the specialties covered with own or external resources.
4. Identify the company’s processes and practices with preventive relevance (purchasing, contracting, design, maintenance, changes) and integrate the safety and health requirements into them.
5. Establish channels for consultation and participation of workers and the relationship with worker safety representatives and the health and safety committee.
6. Approve the plan, communicate it to the entire organization, and determine how it will be reviewed and what indicators will be used to verify its implementation.

Implementation is demonstrated through actions: that assigned functions are carried out, procedures are followed, and the resulting evaluation and planning are actively implemented. An approved plan filed away without further action is the most frequent defect detected by audits and labor inspections.

Minimum content and usual structure

Based on Article 2 of the Regulation, a prevention plan is usually organized into these blocks:

• Company details. Activity, work centers, staff and relevant characteristics, including activities from Annex I if any.
• Policy and objectives. Statement of management, measurable objectives and allocated resources.
• Organization. Organizational chart, functions and preventive responsibilities by level, communication channels, and consultation and participation bodies.
• Organization of prevention. Preventive modality, specialties covered, agreements with external services, preventive resources and coordination of activities.
• Integrated processes. How prevention is incorporated into purchasing, hiring, job design, maintenance, change management, emergencies, and training.
• Monitoring and review. Indicators, periodic review, regulatory audit where applicable, and document control.

The level of detail should be proportional to the size and risk of the activity. SMEs can use the simplified models provided by the INSST; large organizations usually integrate the plan into a documented management system, with procedures that develop each section.

Integration, review, and documentation

The plan is also one of the documents that Article 23 of Law 31/1995 requires to be prepared, kept, and made available to the labor authority. To ensure it fulfills its purpose over time, the following should be guaranteed:

1. A person responsible for its maintenance and a review date, with mandatory review in the event of organizational changes, preventive modality or activity changes.
2. Consistency with risk assessment and planning: if the described structure does not match the person implementing the measures, the plan is outdated.
3. The traceability of the approval, communication to the staff and consultation with the workers’ representatives.
4. The preservation of previous versions to demonstrate the evolution of the system in the event of audits or inspections.
5. Its integration with the procedures for coordinating business activities, so that contractors are aware of the center’s preventive organization.
6. Linking it to training, so that each assigned preventive function has the corresponding training.

Companies subject to regulatory audits should bear in mind that the plan is one of the elements that the auditor examines to assess the effective integration of prevention.

Regulatory framework in Spain

• Law 31/1995, article 16.1 . Defines the prevention plan as an instrument for integrating preventive activity into the general management system and requires its approval, assumption and knowledge by the entire organization; article 23 includes it among the mandatory documentation.
• Royal Decree 39/1997, articles 1 and 2. They regulate the integration of prevention and the content of the plan, its application instruments (evaluation and planning) and the possibility of a single simplified document in companies with up to 50 workers without activities of Annex I.
• Law 54/2003, reforming the regulatory framework for prevention , introduced the obligation of a prevention plan into Law 31/1995 to strengthen the integration of prevention and combat merely formal compliance.
• INSST technical guide for the integration of prevention . Guidelines for designing, implementing and monitoring the plan, with criteria for assigning preventive functions to existing units.

In other countries, the equivalent document forms part of the occupational health and safety management system (for example, the Colombian SG-SST or the system required by Law 29783 in Peru). ISO 45001 does not require a prevention plan with that name, but its requirements for leadership, roles, and planning cover similar content.