Safety Management in Small and Medium Sized Enterprises (SMEs)

Safety is an important aspect of everyday business operations. It can have an impact on the operations of an enterprise as well as the wellbeing of the workers. Literature shows that SMEs face extra problems in this area due to limited resources and lack of knowledge. A potential accident on the premises, in many cases, has devastating consequences. SMEs make up the vast majority of private companies in the EU and beyond. Despite the importance of the issue, the information found in literature is scattered and often not aimed at SMEs. This book aims to gather the latest information and become the full reference point for designing and adopting an appropriate safety strategy for SMEs.

George Boustras is a PhD in Probabilistic Fire Risk Assessment from CFES at Kingston University London. George had been appointed as Honorary Research Fellow at CPSE at Imperial College London, and he was KTP Research Fellow at FSEG at the University of Greenwich. George is currently an Associate Professor at European University Cyprus, Dean of the Ioannis Gregoriou School of Business Administration. George is the Director of the Center for Risk, Safety and the Environment (CERISE) of EUC. He is Representative of the Republic of Cyprus in the Socio-Economic Committee of the European Chemicals Agency (ECHA). He sits at the Management Committee of Secure Societies - Protecting Freedom and security of Europe and its citizens of "HORIZON 2020". He was recently appointed by the President of the Republic in the Energy Strategy Council of the Republic of Cyprus. George is Associate Editor of Safety Science (Elsevier) and Member of the Editorial Board of Fire Technology (Springer).

Frank Guldenmund studied psychology at Leiden University and majored (with distinction) in both cognitive psychology and methods & statistics. In February 1992 he joined the Safety Science Group at Delft University of Technology (DUT), primarily as a methodologist but later became a full staff member, joining in the research and educational tasks of the Group. His research gradually became focused on modelling and assessing (the quality of) safety management systems. Within this context his interest was raised in the topic of safety culture, which he has been pondering since the middle 90s. In January 2010 he defended (with distinction) his PhD thesis ‘Understanding and exploring safety culture’ at DUT. He has been providing trainings and presentations on safety culture both nationally and internationally for many years. In this capacity he operates as trainer for the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in their safety culture self-assessment program.