Safety inspection

What is a safety inspection?

Safety inspections are part of workplace safety control techniques. They involve walking through an area or inspecting equipment according to a predefined plan, recording any deviations from the reference conditions, and generating corrective actions with assigned responsibilities and deadlines. Unlike risk assessments, which identify and evaluate risks globally, inspections periodically verify that actual conditions remain as expected and detect changes and deterioration.

Law 31/1995 does not use the term “safety inspection,” but it requires employers to periodically monitor working conditions and employee activity to detect potentially hazardous situations (Article 16.2.a), review the safety assessment when changes occur, and ensure that work equipment is maintained in safe condition. The safety inspection is the standard instrument for fulfilling these monitoring obligations.

The ILO-OSH 2001 guidelines include workplace inspection among the elements of active performance supervision, along with health surveillance, exposure control and follow-up of planned measures.

Safety inspection and labor inspection: two different things

The overlap in terms creates confusion, especially in small businesses.

• Safety inspection. A voluntary activity in its form, although mandatory in its control purpose, carried out by the company itself through managers, prevention technicians, or designated personnel. Its results are internal and inform prevention planning.
• The Labor and Social Security Inspectorate (ITSS) is a public body regulated by Law 23/2015 that monitors compliance with labor and occupational safety regulations. It can require the correction of deficiencies, halt work in cases of serious and imminent risk, and issue violation reports. Its visits do not replace internal controls nor make them unnecessary.

A well-documented internal inspection system is also the best way to prove to the ITSS that the company is fulfilling its obligation to periodically monitor working conditions.

Types of inspection

• Planned periodic inspections. Walkthroughs of areas or facilities at a fixed frequency (weekly, monthly, quarterly) according to the level of risk, with a specific checklist.
• Inspections of equipment and facilities. Reviews of work equipment, electrical installations, lifting equipment, fire protection systems or pressure installations, many of them with periodicity and content set by specific regulations and carried out by competent personnel or control bodies.
• Pre-commissioning inspections. Before using new equipment, restarting an installation after a modification, or starting a particularly risky project or task.
• Planned work observations. Focused on how the task is performed and not on the material conditions, as described by the INSST in NTP 386; they allow the detection of unsafe practices and inapplicable procedures.
• Extraordinary inspections. Following an accident or incident, a complaint, a significant change, or a request from the labor authority.

How to perform a safety inspection

1. Planning: defining areas, equipment and tasks to be inspected, frequency, responsible parties and checklist adapted to the risks identified in the assessment.
2. Prepare: Review the risk assessment, previous inspection reports, accidents and incidents in the area, and outstanding actions.
3. Execute: Walk around the area under normal working conditions, observe, ask the people who work there, and record each deviation with its location and, if useful, a photograph.
4. Assess: classify deviations by severity and urgency; situations of serious and imminent risk require immediate action.
5. Correct: define measures with responsible party and deadline, integrated into the preventive planning, and communicate the results to the area managers and the worker safety representatives.
6. Follow up: check in the next inspection that the measures have been implemented and have been effective; analyze repeated deviations as an indicator of management failures.

The checklist is a tool, not a substitute for observation: an inspection that simply ticks boxes without observing the actual work loses its value. Mobile inspection apps facilitate recording, photography, assigning measurements, and traceability, and allow for trend analysis across sites.

Organizational application

Safety inspections involve different levels of the organization:

• Direct supervisors. They carry out routine inspections of their area; their involvement is the best sign of the integration of prevention into the hierarchical structure.
• Prevention service. Designs the program, prepares the checklists, conducts specialized inspections, and analyzes the results.
• Worker safety representatives. Law 31/1995 recognizes their right to visit workplaces to monitor and control working conditions; their observations must be integrated into the system.
• Working people. They provide information about the actual functioning and must be able to report deficiencies without waiting for an inspection.
• Management. Review the aggregate results and ensure the resources for the measures.

Limits and common mistakes

1. Always inspect the same thing at the same time, so you see prepared conditions and not the usual ones.
2. Recording deviations without generating measures, or measures without responsible party or deadline, accumulating reports without effect.
3. Confusing inspection with risk assessment: inspection checks conditions, it does not replace risk assessment or review.
4. Forgetting about mandatory equipment and facility inspections, which have their own deadlines and requirements and are not covered by a general tour.
5. Using inspection to punish reduces the cooperation of those being inspected.
6. Do not inspect contract areas or non-routine tasks, where many serious accidents occur.

Regulatory framework in Spain

• Law 31/1995, articles 16.2, 17 and 36.2 . Periodic control of working conditions, obligation to maintain equipment in safe conditions and right of worker safety representatives to visit workplaces.
• Royal Decree 39/1997, articles 3, 6 and 9. The evaluation and its review after periodic controls, and the monitoring of preventive planning.
• Royal Decree 1215/1997, article 4. Initial and periodic checks of work equipment whose safety depends on the installation conditions or is subject to deterioration.
• Law 23/2015, Regulating the System of Labor and Social Security Inspection . It regulates the ITSS, a public body distinct from the internal safety inspection.
• NTP 386: Planned work observations (INSST) . Complementary technique focused on the way tasks are performed.

Numerous industrial safety regulations (electrical installations, pressure equipment , lifting equipment, fire protection) establish mandatory periodic reviews and inspections with their own deadlines and agents; the internal inspection program must integrate them without replacing them.