Hi, I’m Ben Hutchinson and thanks for visiting my site. This is a collection of research summaries posted to LinkedIn.
*** Importantly, this is a labour of love and NOT a commercial project subject to peer review or double checks. I’ve likely made a lot of mistakes in my analysis of the research. So, please, don’t quote me on anything and instead go to the original source to check the claims. ***
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My new study: Safety alchemy: false assurance by converting operational risks into milestone documents
Can safety paperwork make us feel safer without better addressing the risks? Happy to share my newest article with Drew Rae and Sidney Dekker where we explore a phenomenon called ‘safety alchemy’: the conversion of unresolved uncertainty and operational risk into perceived certainty and assurance through … safety artefacts, without a corresponding improvement in the…
High-Energy Hazards & SIF Risk: What the Research Shows (Quickisode)
Are higher-energy hazard interactions more likely to seriously injure or kill people? In this ep, we unpack the empirical link between energy exposure and SIFs – where over 500 injury reports were analysed, and injury energy exposure was estimated using leading information. Key concepts were energy magnitude – being the amount of energy present; and…
What do you expect from audits? Have you ever asked?
What do you or your board expect from safety audits? Have you ever asked this question? Many audit definitions say something like systematically evaluating activities and artefacts match defined criteria but seem to leave a lot off the table. In our 2024 study (‘Audit Masquerade’, Safety Science), we reviewed numerous definitions & goals – and…
Improving firefighters hazard recognition with energy-based hazard recognition training
Does energy-based hazard recognition training improve firefighter HAZID? This tested energy-based hazard recognition on 43 US firefighters pre & post, and 3 months later, employing a control group. PS. Check out my YouTube: https://youtube.com/@safe_as_pod?si=V2dbdmW–WbnhzA9 Shout a coffee: https://buymeacoffee.com/benhutchinson Extracts: • “Hazard recognition is often regarded as the first step in the safety management process …When…
When operators become designers: microprojects, bricolage, and safety in high-risk systems
Does worker adaptation create safer work? This explored how offshore workers undertake microprojects via bricolage, improvising temporary solutions from available resources when original designs (WAI) don’t meet their needs (WAD). Shared under open access licence. PS. Check out my YouTube: https://youtube.com/@safe_as_pod?si=V2dbdmW–WbnhzA9 Shout a coffee: https://buymeacoffee.com/benhutchinson Extracts: • Offshore work is “exacerbated by the complexity of…
Professor Robin Dillon-Merrill Part 2: AI, Machine Learning & Near Misses
Can AI help us identify critical safety blind-spots before disaster? Part 2 interview with Professor Robin Dillon-Merrill who unpacks her 20+ years of research on decision-making under risk, outcome bias, and how organizations misinterpret near misses. We discuss: a) why near-miss biases shape human decision-making & how we can build robust systems to counter them…
This week on Safe As: Strong, Silent & Wrong automation and procedural departures leading to success
This week on Safe As, we unpacked two types of the ‘same same, but different’ systemic blind-spots: a hazardous gap between work-as-imagined/prescribed/designed and work-as-done. 1. Dangerous software: In Dekker & Woods article ‘Strong, Silent, and Wrong’ on automation failure, they use the 838 MAX MCAS accidents to show what happens when high-authority automated systems operate…
~11k work-related deaths: 1% from accidents but 46% from occupational cancer
~11k work-related deaths: 1% from accidents but 46% from occupational cancer. In 2019, an estimated ~11k work-related deaths occurred across the Nordic countries. Only 143, or 1%, were attributed to accidents at work. This data came from the report ‘Work today and in the future Part three. Work-related fatalities in the Nordic countries’. It attributes…
The Rhetoric of Risk: Does the investigation form ‘write’ the findings before anyone investigates?
What if sometimes the investigation template has written the findings before anyone investigates? In Beverly Sauer’s interesting ‘Rhetoric of Risk’, she examines a US mining agency’s Physical Barrier Analysis Matrix. Via 50 accidents, it recorded that physical barriers were “not possible or practical” in most of them. For Sauer, this form “seems constructed to support”…
If procedural deviation is a primary ’cause’ of failure, what if it’s also a primary ’cause’ of success? (Safe As Quickisodes)
If procedural deviation is a primary ’cause’ of failure, what if it’s also a primary ’cause’ of success? Today on Safe As Quickisodes, I rapidly unpack a study tracking 1,422 procedural steps across 40 petrochemical operations. Link in comments. Using their Skip-Order-Action (SOA) Framework, they explored how frontline personnel navigate written instructions in practice: revealing…
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