The National Safety Council has launched a new SIF prevention tool that allows laboratories to identify safety gaps before they lead to serious injuries and fatalities. The Organization Safety Gap Analysis Tool provides laboratory leaders with a structured, system-level approach to evaluate how effectively their safety programs control high-severity risks associated with chemical handling, equipment operation, and complex experimental workflows.
Serious injuries and fatalities, often called SIFs, are rare but catastrophic events that result in life-altering harm or death. In laboratory settings, these outcomes can stem from chemical exposures, fires, equipment failures, uncontrolled energy release, or breakdowns in containment. Because SIFs typically emerge from organizational weaknesses rather than from single unsafe acts, conventional safety audits often fail to reveal the laboratory safety gaps that enable them.
Developed through NSC’s Work to Zero initiative in partnership with the NCCCO Foundation, the SIF prevention tool transforms the council’s evidence-based SIF Prevention Model into an interactive digital assessment that evaluates leadership, hazard control, and safety culture.
What the SIF prevention tool does
The SIF prevention tool evaluates whether laboratory safety systems can prevent high-consequence events, not just minor injuries. Instead of relying on lagging indicators such as incident rates, the tool examines whether leadership practices, hazard identification, and control systems are strong enough to stop serious injuries and fatalities from developing.
The digital platform replaces NSC’s traditional checklist with a tailored assessment that adapts to how users score each section. This allows laboratory managers to see where strong controls exist and where laboratory safety gaps may expose workers to severe harm.
Seven core elements of SIF prevention
The SIF prevention tool measures performance across seven elements that NSC identifies as essential for preventing serious injuries and fatalities:
- Safety and health operating environment: How laboratory spaces, equipment, and workflows influence high-severity hazard exposure
- Management leadership: How leaders set priorities, provide resources, and enforce accountability
- Worker engagement: Whether staff actively participate in hazard reporting and safety decision-making
- Hazard identification and prioritization: How labs detect and rank activities with the greatest SIF potential
- Hazard abatement and control: Whether engineering, administrative, and procedural controls reduce high-energy risks
- Implementation and operation: How consistently do safety systems function during daily laboratory work
- Continuous improvement: How audits, data, and incident reviews drive ongoing risk reduction
Together, these elements help laboratories detect safety gaps that may not be identified during routine compliance inspections.
How the SIF prevention tool works
Laboratory leaders complete a 10- to 15-minute self-assessment in which each statement receives a color-coded score:
- Green indicates the criterion is fully met
- Yellow indicates partial compliance
- Red indicates little or no evidence of compliance
The SIF prevention tool then produces a results summary that shows strengths and weaknesses across all seven elements, along with targeted recommendations and best practices. This enables laboratory managers to prioritize the controls most likely to reduce serious injuries and fatalities.
Why this matters—and what lab managers should do next
Laboratories routinely handle volatile chemicals, compressed gases, biological agents, cryogenic systems, and high-energy equipment. While most labs meet baseline regulatory requirements, serious injuries and fatalities often occur when multiple small failures align.
The SIF prevention tool helps laboratory leaders identify safety gaps related to leadership, hazard prioritization, and control effectiveness—weaknesses that traditional audits may overlook. By evaluating these systemic vulnerabilities, lab managers can take proactive steps to prevent catastrophic incidents.
This digital assessment offers a practical way to benchmark safety maturity, guide corrective action, and support decisions on training, engineering controls, and operational safeguards. Results can also enhance internal audits, inform safety committee planning, and align with evolving regulatory expectations.
As accrediting bodies shift toward high-severity risk prevention, tools like this will play a central role in modern laboratory safety management, ensuring that labs are not just compliant but truly prepared to protect their people.
This article was created with the assistance of Generative AI and has undergone editorial review before publishing.
