Compliance Inspections Research Articles

Optimal inspection (monitoring) and penalty (fine) for plastic bag ban compliance in Nepal

Optimal inspection (monitoring) and penalty (fine) for plastic bag ban compliance in Nepal

Minimum Space When Transporting Pigs: Where Is the "Good" Law?

This paper focuses on the problem of numeracy when writing regulations, specifically how to describe a threshold for crowding of pigs during transport, considering transported pigs range in body mass from 5 to 500 kg. When scientific findings provide the basis for regulation in the public interest, those findings must be communicated in a consistent way to regulators and policymaking bodies. Numeracy is the ability to understand, reason with, and apply appropriate numerical concepts to real-world questions. Scientific understanding is almost always based on rational understanding of numerical information, numeracy. The threshold of administrative offenses is often a numerical description. Commercial livestock transporters have an interest in loading livestock compartments to the maximum to achieve the largest payload allowed by axle weight laws, as is the case in all bulk commodity transport. Maximizing payload minimizes costs and environmental hazards of fuel exhaust and can benefit the public with lower pork prices, but has a serious animal welfare risk. Livestock production academics, veterinarians, and animal welfare activists have been working for decades to determine the level of livestock crowding in transport containers that would be appropriate for regulatory enforcement. The scientific discourse has been plagued by a lack of numerical standardization when describing results of trials and forming recommendations. Exceeding specific numerical thresholds is the core to implementing enforcement actions. This paper examines the communication and other barriers that have prevented emergence of a consensus on this question and provides a direction toward resolution. Further confirmation of effects of crowding livestock in transit is needed. This paper suggests that articulating an enforceable standard in pig transport is possible. In inspection for compliance, discovering the LP50 (lethal pressure-50) for slaughter-weight pigs is an initial global benchmark goal. The LP50 is the loading floor pressure in a commercial transport compartment, under field conditions, that would result in the death of at least one pig in the group 50% of the time.

Sharia Banking Internal Auditors' Perceptions Regarding the Influence of Auditors' Sharia Knowledge Education on the Effectiveness of Sharia Compliance Inspections

Islamic banks need to ensure that their operations comply with sharia principles to increase loyalty and satisfaction of sharia bank customers. Internal audit has one of the functions of ensuring sharia compliance has been fulfilled in sharia banking by carrying out sharia compliance checks. One of the challenges in internal audit in carrying out its function is the lack of qualified sharia auditors who have adequate sharia knowledge. In this context, education in sharia science for auditors becomes very relevant. This research aims to identify the influence of formal and non-formal sharia education for auditors on increasing the effectiveness of auditing compliance with sharia principles in sharia banking according to the perception of internal auditors. The method used is a quantitative method by distributing questionnaires to internal auditors in conventional commercial banks that have Sharia Business Units. Based on the results of this research, the variable perception of formal sharia science education does not have a significant effect on the effectiveness of sharia compliance checks, the perception of non-formal sharia science education has a significant effect on the effectiveness of sharia compliance checks. Furthermore, simultaneously the variables of perception of formal sharia education and non-formal sharia science education have a significant effect on the effectiveness of sharia compliance.

Tuân thủ quy trình tiêm tĩnh mạch an toàn của nữ hộ sinh tại Khoa Sản, Bệnh viện đa khoa tỉnh Khánh Hoà năm 2023

The study was implemented to describe midwives' compliance to safe intravenous injection procedures at the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, Khanh Hoa General Hospital 2023. This was a cross-sectional study, applying quantitative methods, conducted from November 2022 to September 2023, using safe injection procedure of the Ministry of Health (20 steps divided into 3 phases: before injection, during injection, and afterward) to observe 210 intravenous injections implemented by 70 midwives. Results: The percentage of safe intravenous injections was quite low, only 45.2%; in which, the compliance rate at pre-injection phase ranged from 61.4 - 100%; the compliance rate at the injecting phase is quite high from 98.1 - 100%; in the last phase, post-injection, compliance rate ranged from 91.9 - 100%. Less than 50% of intravenous injections were assessed for compliance with safety procedures. The Nursing Department needs to strengthen inspection and supervision of compliance with safe intravenous injection procedures by midwives at the unit and advise the hospital Board of Directors to promulgate regulations on rewards and punishments in the unit. Practicing safe injections in hospitals. Keywords: Intravenous injection, midwife.

Good manufacturing practice in low‐ and middle‐income countries: Challenges and solutions for compliance

AbstractApproximately 2 billion people globally have limited access to essential medicines, particularly those living in low‐ and middle‐income countries (LMICs). In addition, there is a higher prevalence of substandard and counterfeit medicines in LMICs, which may cause antimicrobial resistance and therapeutic failure. Good manufacturing practice (GMP) is key to ensuring access to high‐quality, safe and effective medicines, including active pharmaceutical ingredients and excipients used for manufacturing finished dosage forms. Compliance with GMP standards saves resources for both manufacturers (e.g. avoiding expensive product recalls) and governments (e.g. minimising compliance inspections). Concerted collaborations among different countries to harmonise GMP standards and procedures have occurred, and the World Health Organisation (WHO) GMP is commonly used in LMICs. However, barriers to GMP compliance remain apparent, particularly in LMICs. Pharmaceutical manufacturers in LMICs face several barriers such as inadequate resources and infrastructure, inefficient or weak regulation, a shortage of skilled people and limited training opportunities for manufacturing personnel. Although national regulatory authorities (NRAs) have been established in LMICs, most NRAs are not fully independent and are placed within the health department. NRAs in LMICs are not able to fully utilise international and regional reliance mechanisms and collaborations. Therefore, both NRAs and pharmaceutical manufacturers must be adequately supported through resources, infrastructure and capacity‐building opportunities. NRAs must be suitably empowered with assured functional independence. A comprehensive guideline for managing conflicts of interest among pharmaceutical manufacturers, procurement agencies and NRAs is needed. NRAs must liaise with other NRAs, participate in joint GMP inspections and leverage the expertise of regional or international collaborations. Pharmaceutical manufacturers in LMICs can leverage WHO GMP standards to improve GMP compliance and expand their market. However, as these solutions may have cost implications, prioritising key gaps for GMP compliance and optimisation of available resources are essential.

The effectiveness‐equity tradeoff when resources decline: Evidence from environmental policy implementation in the U.S. states

AbstractDespite a voluminous literature on resource availability and the implications for organizational performance, little is known about how changes in government agencies' resources impact their policy implementation activities and goal prioritization. This article explores how changes in resources affect regulatory enforcement activities by types of resources and policy implementation activities, and whether resource cutbacks prompt a tradeoff of the effectiveness‐equity goals. Using the block‐group level data on the Clean Air Act (CAA) implementation from 2012 to 2019, we find that state environmental agencies prioritize regulatory effectiveness over environmental justice by concentrating their resources on communities where task demands correspond to organizations' core missions. They also promote social equity to some extent when facing spending cutbacks but not staffing cuts. Spending cutbacks had a less severe impact on compliance inspections for more socially vulnerable communities, while those exposed to more imminent environmental harms received more inspections.

A Study on the Mode of Corporate Compliance Inspection based on the Context of the Pretty Crimes Governance System

A Study on the Mode of Corporate Compliance Inspection based on the Context of the Pretty Crimes Governance System

Blockchain-based platform for the compliance inspection of the ready-mixed concrete supply chain

Blockchain-based platform for the compliance inspection of the ready-mixed concrete supply chain

Stakeholder views of prevalent unethical practices in the Ghanaian construction industry

PurposeThis study aims to investigate stakeholders' perception of the most prevalent unethical practices in the Ghanaian construction industry.Design/methodology/approachData used for this study came from a cross-sectional survey (questionnaire), which was administered to 273 stakeholders in the construction industry using convenience sampling technique. The data were analyzed using statistical software package SPSSv17 to determine the most prevalent unethical practices. The ranking factor was calculated based on relative importance index (RII) value.FindingsThe results of this study reveal that corruption was perceived by major stakeholders as the most prevalent unethical behavior (RII = 0.82) followed by bribery (RII = 0.79). Political interference and kickback came third (RII = 0.77) and fourth (RII = 0.74), respectively. However, the least prevalent unethical behaviors were extortion (RII = 0.56), workplace violence (RII = 0.57), alcohol abuse (RII = 0.59) and harassment (RII = 0.59). The findings suggest that when the various groupings were taken into consideration separately, the differences in their perceptions were obvious.Research limitations/implicationsData for this study were collected from construction stakeholders in Ghana who were conveniently sampled. As a result, in reference to the sampling framework which focused on major stakeholders in only two regions of Ghana does not sufficiently ensure full generalization of the results.Practical implicationsThe findings of the study provide significant information for construction organizations and practitioners regarding unethical practices, which are most prevalent in the Ghanaian construction industry. Construction organizations and practitioners seeking to mitigate the negative effect of unethical practices on their performance should focus on educating construction workers on how to avoid corrupt practices and report same to the authorities. Also, ethics training programs must be instituted for staff coupled with constant and random inspection and checking of ethical compliance, verbal promotion and praise for ethical conduct and in some cases increase in employees pay.Originality/valueThis paper is one of the first to have accessed the views of broader stakeholders, i.e. consultants, contractors, professionals, suppliers, regulators, clients and construction workers in the construction industry regarding the most prevalent unethical practices in the Ghanaian construction industry in one study. This study, therefore, enriches the current literature by providing additional dimension to the understanding of unethical practices in the Ghanaian construction industry.

Automatic compliance inspection and monitoring of building structural members using multi-temporal point clouds

Automatic compliance inspection and monitoring of building structural members using multi-temporal point clouds

A systems approach to biosecurity pays off: a case study investigating introduction pathways and interceptions of non-indigenous species at a biosecurity border

Introduction pathway studies generally describe the diverse routes by which non-indigenous species (NIS) can be introduced but rarely consider multiple introduction pathways occurring simultaneously. In this study, multiple pathways of NIS introduction were investigated during an industrial development on a remote island off the Australian coast. Fifteen introduction pathways were categorized in association with importing locality and the type of cargo they transported. The number and types of detection events for each introduction pathway were recorded during biosecurity inspections, cargo clearances, and surveillance conducted between 2009 and 2015. In total, more than 600,000 biosecurity inspections were completed, with 5,328 border detection events recorded constituting less than 1% of the biosecurity inspections. The border inspection events were classified as animals, plant material, soil, and organic matter, with 60% identified as dead or non-viable and 40% as alive. Of those detections, 2153 were classified as NIS, consisting of 659 identified species. Live NIS detected at the border constituted only 2% of the detections. Cargo vessel and inward-bound passenger numbers peaked during the major construction period and were associated with an increase in the number of live NIS detections. All introduction pathways have complexities, unique structural aspects, and niche areas that supported NIS in surviving the effects of treatment and evading detection during the mandatory compliance inspection. This study highlights that biosecurity incursions can be minimized if a systems approach is adopted to complement traditional and other biosecurity surveillance measures.

Research on the Impact of the Deferred Prosecution Agreement System on the Establishment of Corporate Compliance Program

The deferred prosecution agreement system, which originated in the United States, is gradually accepted by Britain, France, Canada, Australia and other countries, and is regarded as an important way to deal with corporate crime cases. Taking the development of deferred prosecution agreement system as a lesson, it is of great significance to improve the system of unit criminal responsibility in China, which will change the judicial practice that China pays attention to individual crimes and ignores unit crimes, promote the popularization and maturity of corporate compliance program, and effectively prevent and punish unit crimes. Under the influence of COVID-19 epidemic, the urgent need to restore economic development and strengthen special protection for private enterprises and entrepreneurs has become a criminal justice concept generally accepted by judicial organs in China. This paper discusses the influence of deferred prosecution agreement system on the construction of corporate compliance program and puts forward the construction ideas for the specific content of deferred prosecution system in China, including the applicable object, applicable conditions, compliance inspection and the specific setting of deferred prosecution procedures. Although the focus of this paper is to study the impact of the deferred prosecution agreement system embedded in China's criminal proceedings on the construction of corporate compliance program in China, however Nowadays corporate compliance involves and has already extends beyond criminal law to include administrative law, civil law, industry rules and business ethics. Therefore, this paper also calls for attention from other perspectives from the perspective, i.e., from the perspective of administrative law, there is also great value in establishing a reduction, exemption and deferred punishment system for enterprises who violate laws. We must propose solutions with Chinese characteristics according to China's national conditions and status and help Chinese enterprises to build corporate compliance plans and programs.

REGULATORY COMPLIANCE AND RESIDENT OUTCOMES IN OREGON ASSISTED LIVING COMMUNITIES

Abstract The outsized negative impact of the COVID-19 pandemic among residents of assisted living (AL) communities has drawn attention to the existing challenges that licensing agencies face in providing oversight in this setting. While regulatory compliance inspections in AL may be a critical tool for promoting high-quality care, no published research has examined the association between deficiencies and resident outcomes in AL. Using novel data collected from 331 AL communities in Oregon (response rate=62%) merged with deficiency data from inspections, we examined whether the number of deficiencies is associated with the following resident outcomes as measured at the community level: share of residents who fell at least one time (fall rate), who were hospitalized overnight (hospitalization rate), and who were treated in the hospital emergency room (ER rate) in the last 90 days. Negative binomial regression models that controlled for a robust set of community (e.g., size, rurality, profit status, “memory care” units) and resident (e.g., age, Medicaid use, ADL needs) characteristics showed a weak, but statistically significant, association between deficiencies and hospitalization rate (IRR=1.05). However, there was no statistically significant association between deficiencies and falls or ER visits among residents. The time lag between inspections and the resident outcome data did not moderate these observed associations. With more states moving to make available such deficiency data on public-facing websites, these results have policy implications for the role and content of regulatory compliance inspections for ensuring quality in AL communities and informing the public.

Changing Landscape and Future of Medical Affairs Post COVID-19 Pandemic Era

A striking change in the external stakeholders’ engagement due to unexpected scenarios as a result of COVID-19 pandemic has hurled the medical affairs (MA) function into innovative strategies of scientific engagements and patient-centric activities. Expansion of MA functions including rising regulatory and compliance inspections, an increased patient centricity and more requirements for RWE, have created the importance of medical affairs not just being the support function but as a trusted strategic pillar in the pharmaceutical and healthcare industry. There is certainly a silver lining due to strong digital transformation within these adverse times. The present review is focused on digital transformation for dissemination of medical information and its advantages over traditional ways. In today’s pandemic era HCPs have embraced the idea of virtual CMEs and digital storytelling which has necessitated the MA function to become more agile, adapted and look for collaborations. Both the exponential and radical improvements are required to strengthen this transition, in the new normal of a post-COVID era. The digital innovation in three key vitals viz. HCP engagement, external partnerships and data generation will allow MA to become future fit as a strategic leadership function. Moreover, the recommendations from executive committees of renowned international societies such as APPA, IFAPP, MAPS and MSLS, who have contributed for MA function to create their own standard operating procedures (SOPs), policies which are relevant for industry, are also discussed. Keywords: COVID-19, digital transformation, massive open online courses, medical affairs, omni-channel; real- world evidence

Research on Coal Mine Building Compliance Inspection System Based on Accident Causation and BIM in China

Coal mine construction projects have high risks, and non-compliant designs generated in the design stage will have adverse effects on subsequent construction and production stages. Therefore, it is of great importance to conduct effective preconstruction compliance inspections on coal mine construction designs. To make the compliance check of coal mine building design more rapid and effective, and to reduce the risks arising from the design phase, this study built a compliance inspection system for coal mine building design from the causes of coal mine accidents, using the Word2Vec word similarity calculation method and BIM platform secondary development technology. The system was tested and was found to be able to detect a 92.82% non-compliant component rate where the correct inspection rate was 97.68%. In addition, the inspection time for a single component was only 0.23 s. The construction of the compliance inspection system based on accident causes has changed the extensive inspection mode in the traditional manual model inspection, and the inspection no longer depends on the experience of inspectors, thus improving the efficiency and accuracy of coal mine building model inspection. The inspection focuses on the building elements with high risks, which achieves the purpose of risk control in the design stage.

The Philippines and seafaring labour export: State, non‐state and international actors in the assembly and employability of Filipino seafarers

AbstractBased on interviews, this article examines the Philippines as a sending state from the perspective of seafaring labour export. It analyses how the outsourcing of seafaring labour and global regulation of standards of seafarer education, training and certification have broadened and deepened the involvement of international actors in Filipino seafaring labour. It situates these developments in two phases of seafaring labour migration, thereby clarifying the role of these international actors and their relationship with state and non‐state actors. These international actors have influenced Philippine policy on seafaring labour and employment, are vitally involved in assembling Filipino seafaring labour through their investment in maritime education and training and are determining Filipino seafarers' employability through their inspection of Philippine compliance with the STCW convention. Compliance with this international instrument mobilised the state to reshape the functioning of its agencies to revitalise its capacity as a sending state.

UAV Inspection of Compliance of Fuel Sulfur Content of Sailing Ships in the Pearl River Delta, China

Air pollutants emitted by ships are one of the major causes of global environmental and human health problems, especially for sulfur oxides (SO2). In this study, a mini-sniffing sensor was mounted on the unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) to monitor the concentration relationship between CO2 and SO2 in the exhaust gas of sailing ships, then the sulfur content of the ship’s fuel oil was estimated to evaluate the compliance of the fuel sulfur content (FSC) with IMO regulations. In the experiment, the measurement results of the exhaust gas of sailing ships in the Pearl River Delta were presented, the data set from February to April 2022 was provided, and 445 ships were comprehensively analyzed from the perspectives of ship length and ship type. From the experimental results, considering the error of the sensor, the compliance rate of the FSC of sailing ships entering and leaving the Pearl River reached 93.7%. To some extent, the current situation for meeting the 0.5% (m/m) limit is basically optimistic. The results represent the effectiveness of DECA policy implementation. This paper demonstrates the effectiveness and reliability of the UAV monitoring method in monitoring emissions from ships, and in more effectively monitoring the impact of shipping on air quality. Furthermore, an accurate and non-contact monitoring method is proposed, which can allow law enforcement officers to judge in advance whether the ships sailing is suspected of illegally using high-sulfur fuels. It can improve the efficiency of law enforcement and reduce the cost of supervision.

Basic Cyber Security Considerations for Licensees of Radioactive Materials and Registrants of Radiation Producing Devices in an Era of Remote or Hybrid Compliance Inspections.

The onset of the COVID pandemic impacted various regulatory agencies' ability to safely fulfill their regulatory compliance inspection mandates via on-site inspections. Some agencies shifted to a remote or hybrid inspection process, which necessitates the electronic transmittal of a variety of records that may or may not have been transmitted in this fashion in the past, raising concerns about the records being sent and received securely. Considering this new environment, some basic cyber security diagnostic considerations are described for radiation source permit holders to consider prior to responding to an apparent legitimate regulatory inspection request, both in the current COVID cyber risk environment and the environment likely to exist into the future.

Automated code compliance check of residential buildings for parking regulation in Turkey

Compliance inspection of a building, which involves following legislated rules during the design phase of a project, is a manual, time-consuming, error-prone and labour-intensive process that primarily relies on two-dimensional drawings. Innovations brought about by building-information-modelling (BIM) lead up to the automatic compliance inspection of buildings with the relevant regulation. The BIM model of a building, contained within the industry-foundation-classes (IFC) data file, includes all pertinent geometric and semantic three-dimensional data of that building. Using these IFC files, a program, intended for use in municipalities in Turkey but applicable elsewhere, has been developed that automatically inspects the compliance of the building with area parking regulations. This study presents the program's development as well as test results in its use. The program successfully simplifies the compliance inspection process by determining the size of the required parking area, as well as the number of spaces to be available, according to Turkish parking lot regulations for residential buildings, and setting controls accordingly. The program is yet to be implemented commercially, however, the program can be a tool that provides convenience and speed to stakeholders, including architects and engineers, during both the design and control stages while also minimising the error rate.

Vision-based monitoring of site safety compliance based on worker re-identification and personal protective equipment classification

Construction sites are highly hazardous due to the dynamic interaction between workers and moving equipment, with high fatality rates caused by collision and falling from height, etc. Hence, identifying unsafe behaviors among workers is crucial for enhancing site safety, such as tracking their on-site movement and personal protective equipment (PPE). Vision-based video processing has been actively used to automatically recognize workers and their behaviors on construction sites. However, existing studies mainly monitor workers within a single camera capturing only a small sub-region. As workers typically move around fairly large sites, continuously tracking their movement across multiple cameras would enable more comprehensive behavioral analyses. Hence, this paper proposes a framework for monitoring safety compliance among workers, by combining worker re-identification (ReID) and PPE classification. Deep learning-based approaches are developed to address the challenges for these two tasks respectively. For ReID, a new loss function named similarity loss is designed to encourage deep learning models to learn more discriminative human features, realizing a more robust tracking of individual workers. For classifying PPE statuses, a weighted-class strategy is proposed to mitigate model bias when given imbalanced samples among classes, for improved performance despite limited training samples. By combining the ReID and PPE classification results, a workflow is developed to log any incident of workers not wearing the necessary PPEs. With an actual construction site dataset, the proposed methods improve worker ReID and PPE classification by 4% and 13% accuracies respectively, which will facilitate site video analytics and inspection of site safety compliance among workers.