Workplace
safety.

External safety officer (RSPP)

An employer who cannot or does not wish to take on the role personally must appoint a Head of the Prevention and Protection Service — in Italian, RSPP. That can be me.

The appointment runs for a year and is renewable. It covers the ordinary management of everything the law places on the prevention service: identifying risk factors, defining preventive measures, planning information and training, and holding the periodic safety meeting required by article 35 for companies with more than fifteen employees.

In practice this means scheduled site visits with a written record, updating the risk assessment document whenever something significant changes, support during inspections, and a direct contact to call when an answer cannot wait for the next visit.

• Formal appointment under articles 31 and 32 of Legislative Decree 81/2008
• Agreed periodic site visits, each with a written record
• Convening and minuting the periodic safety meeting
• Liaison with the occupational physician and the workers' safety representative
• Support during inspections by the enforcement authorities

Risk assessment

The risk assessment document (DVR) is mandatory for every company with even one employee, and it cannot be delegated: it remains the employer's personal responsibility.

I build it from the workplace, not from a template. An initial site visit, watching the work as it is actually carried out, an inventory of the equipment and substances in use; then the assessment of each risk against a stated, repeatable criterion, and an improvement plan with measures, owners and deadlines.

The document covers risks by homogeneous groups of workers, the specific assessments — work-related stress, manual handling of loads, noise, vibration, display screen equipment — and the record templates needed to keep it alive over the years.

• Site visit and analysis of the work cycle
• Assessment by job role and by homogeneous group
• Improvement plan with priorities and deadlines
• Templates for PPE issue, training and maintenance records
• Update whenever the production process changes

Chemical risk

Wherever chemicals are used, Title IX requires a dedicated assessment. It is technical work, separate from the general risk assessment.

It starts from the real inventory of substances and mixtures present on site and from their safety data sheets, which have to be read and checked: they are often out of date, incomplete, or refer to a product other than the one actually in use. From there, exposure is estimated using the MoVaRisCh model, compared against occupational exposure limit values, and protective equipment is chosen and justified — gloves included, which are not interchangeable and must be selected for the breakthrough time of the specific substance.

Carcinogens and mutagens under Chapter II are handled separately, since they carry stricter obligations: a register of exposed workers, priority to engineering controls, and health surveillance.

For companies that do not merely use hazardous mixtures but manufacture or place them on the market, I also cover the CLP side: classification and labelling, drafting and checking safety data sheets, poison centre notification (PCN) and the UFI code on the label.

Construction site safety

Every company entering a temporary or mobile construction site must hand over its own Operational Safety Plan (POS) before work begins.

I draft the POS to the minimum content of Annex XV, specific to that site and those operations: a sheet for each work phase, the equipment and temporary works used, the assessment of the risks the activity itself brings, and the coordination measures with the site safety and coordination plan where a coordinator has been appointed.

Alongside the plan I handle the paperwork that most often blocks access to a site: verification of the requirements under article 90, the preliminary notification, the documents requested by the client, and the Italian construction credit licence.