Safety Thought of the Week

To improve safety performance, coherent action is required in three (3) areas: 1) technical aspects, 2) safety management, and 3) human and organizational factors These different “pillars” all influence the safety culture. It should be emphasized that, in any given company, safety priorities have undergone several phases of chronological development, with each new area of…...

Safe and reliable performance is a process to be guided, not an outcome to be managed. Safety is wisdom. We create safety, or more importantly, we co-create safety in the RELATIONSHIP between workers, planners, managers, and the tasks being accomplished in real-time. None of those components mentioned above involves the scoring and tracking of work…...

“People are actually very reliable, but there are many opportunities for error in the course of a day’s work, and when handling hazardous materials, we can tolerate only very low error rates (and equipment failure rates), lower than it may be possible to achieve. We may be able to keep up a tip-top performance for…...

“People are actually very reliable, but there are many opportunities for error in the course of a day’s work, and when handling hazardous materials, we can tolerate only very low error rates (and equipment failure rates), lower than it may be possible to achieve…. Membership Required You must be a member to access this content.View...

The value of a Root Cause Analysis and Corrective Action Plan process to a business If the critique process is effective and an organization successfully determines why the event occurred, the appropriate corrective action can be achieved. The avoided cost associated with recurrence and improvement in performance is the organization’s dividend…. Membership Required You must...

Most organizations espouse a variety of values, some of which are intrinsically contradictory, so new employees must figure out for themselves what is really rewarded – customer satisfaction, productivity, safety, minimizing costs, or maximizing returns to the investors. Only by observing actual promotions and performance reviews can newcomers figure out what the underlying assumptions are…...

If we wish to find out why accidents occurred and find ways of preventing them from happening again, we need a sympathetic attitude towards people who have committed so-called violations, have made slips, had lapses of attention, or not learnt what their training was supposed to teach them. It is a small price and is…...

If a facility spends hundreds of hours and thousands of dollars on paint the month before an audit… we may be doing “it” wrong! Early in my career, I sat in my weekly staff meeting when the plant manager announced our corporate safety and health audit. As in most organizations, these are “big deals”. A…...

It is important to note that preventive actions are not entirely the same for the different risk categories (minor, serious, or major): organizational failures generally play a much greater role in serious accidents than minor accidents. Indeed, a serious event usually implies the systemic failure of many barriers. The prevention of major accident hazards should,…...

It is important to note that preventive actions are not entirely the same for the different risk categories (minor, serious, or major): organizational failures generally play a much greater role in serious accidents than minor accidents. Indeed, a serious event usually implies the systemic failure of many barriers. The prevention of major accident hazards should,…...

“Kick Up The Arse” – KUTA principle Here is the rule Comply with the rule Enforce the rule Punish people who don’t comply Put a cop on every beat and police the rule We’ll catch you and watch out. Results? No ownership, limited maturity, and reporting goes “underground.” This thinking drives a “nanny” mindset: power…...