Risk Informed Decision Making by a Public Safety Regulatory Authority in Canada: A Case Study involving Risk Based Scheduling of Periodic Inspections

The Technical Standards and Safety Authority (TSSA) is an independent, not-for-profit organization that administers and enforces public safety laws associated with Amusement Devices, Elevating Devices, Boilers and Pressure Vessels, Fuels, Operating Engineers, and Upholstery and Stuffed Articles, under Ontario’s Technical Standards and Safety Act through an administrative agreement with the province of Ontario in Canada. TSSA has introduced a risk informed decision-making framework across a wide variety of safety activities in each of the regulated sectors. One of these activities involves periodic engineering inspections of facilities and equipment during operation to ensure that the devices continue to operate safely. The inspection process reviews how the equipment and technology are being used, operated and maintained, and identifies any non-compliance to safety codes and regulations. TSSA has designed and implemented risk-based inspection scheduling models across most of its industry sectors to ensure that devices that present the highest risk to the public are inspected more often while low-risk units are assigned longer inspection cycles. The model development and implementation was carried out in three stages: 1) Concept development based on identification of risk factors representing the devices and equipment, human-device interaction, and location; 2) Model design using a semi-quantitative risk assessment approach; and 3) Implementation, including automated scheduling, monitoring, and measurement. This presentation will describe the three stages with specific reference to the model developed for the elevating devices sector.