Safety…It’s the System, Stupid
January 1st, 2004 by Hal
We've made so little progress in the safety of construction work. Over 1,200 people die each year and 100s of thousands are injured. The chemical industry doesn't have these problems. Nor does the airline industry. Those two industries and many others are known as high reliability organizations (HROs). They start with the premise that humans will do what humans will do: we make mistakes; we get distracted; we engage in risky behavior. But for the most part, airlines are safe; chemical plants are safe; nuclear power plants are safe. And all these HRO industries have people working throughout. The difference between these organizations and the construction industry is the system.
Each Thursday in 2004 I will write about safety. I have much to learn. I'm not an expert on safety. I do see an anomaly in the construction industry. There are companies who are much safer than their counterparts, as much as ¾ fewer injuries than average. I have a story that begins to explain their success, but it's just a story. I invite you to send me your stories, news stories, Internet references, anything that might contribute to a breakthrough.
And what about all the readers who work outside of the construction industry? I invite you to engage with us fully. Some of the greatest breakthroughs have come from people outside the situation. Please bring your questions, perspectives, and opinions to this on-going exploration and reform of safety in the construction industry.
Please join me each week for safety Thursday and please invite the safety experts in your companies to join us here.
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January 2nd, 2004 at 2:40 pm
Hal, you may want to attend any presentation made by JMJ out of Austin, TX. They get safety and their approach is very in tune with Lean and on site conversations. But I am glad that you are now about to dive in to your true passion. Let me know if I can help.
gary
January 5th, 2004 at 4:14 pm
Hal,
HROs tend to be distinguished by a number of factors, including:
- strong enculturation of personnel, in part through intensive training and repeated drills
- emphasis on learning from experience instead of punishment for mistakes
- commitment to minimizing error cost
- potentially powerful impact constituency (outside stakeholders)
- sufficient funds for training, monitoring, and redundancy
- relatively free flow of information up and down the hierarchy
- ability to rapidly devolve high-tempo and crisis decision making authority to the most appropriate levels
Not all HROs have all of these features, and the various scholars who have studied HROs categorize features in different ways, but this gives a sense of why HROs are considered to be special.
The industries you cite - nuclear, chemical, and airline - all have tremendous incentives to institutionalize high reliability. The potential negative effects of accidents include loss of highly trained personnel, loss of expensive facilities, loss of customer confidence, and catastrophic loss of non-operator personnel. The construction industry has similar incentives to create highly reliable products, but can the same be said for the process of construction?
January 5th, 2004 at 6:48 pm
Andrew,
Thanks so much for your comments. I hope to see more of your thoughtful perspectives in the Safety Thursdays postings.
I do think we can bring about a model of high reliability for construction projects. (I’m willing to be proven wrong.) Your question about the process of construction is on the mark. There is no repeatable process of construction. Of course we excavate before we go up. We tie rebar before we place concrete. But even when mile after mile of sound wall or Jersey barriers are constructed, the grade differs, the people differ, and aspects of the design differ.
The opportunity may lie in the process of the managing the project. We can bring reliability to the preparation of work. We can reliability to the conversations about the work. And we can bring reliability to the organization of work. None of that is attempted today on the usual safe work setting. I don’t see an impediment to doing so.
Thanks again. :+:
February 15th, 2004 at 12:31 pm
Thank you for your efforts to improve safety in construction. We all have to be willing to go the extra step to make a differencfe. We definately have to get the message out that it is the system, not the individual. Too many times, the cause is placed on the employee, rather than the management system. An accident cause is never just one thing, it is a multitude of causes. Until we take ananlyzing near misses seriously and involving the employee in the process, the cause will contine to be determined to be the employee by many construction companies.