Mammoth 'Handbook' Project Nearing Completion
"The Safety Professional's Handbook" has been an ASSE project for about four years, but the epic work is finally coming to fruition. The book will have 79 or 80 chapters and will be published in a hard-copy edition of more than 1,000 pages, possibly in two volumes, in 2008. Michael Burditt, ASSE's manager of technical publications, said June 25 he hopes the book will be published in the first half of 2008. This timetable suggests it may be available by the time Safety 2008, ASSE's annual conference next year, takes place in Las Vegas.
Some chapters are more than 100 pages long at this point, but the final editing of about half of the chapters has not been completed. An instructor's manual will be provided on CD-ROM; at this point, the book itself will be published in hard copy only, Burditt said.
Burditt said the book will include all of the essential elements of professional safety practice, and ASSE has never published a handbook like it before. ASSE hopes to place the handbook on a four-year revision cycle, he said.