Does adding more checks and more people make work ‘safer’?
I think it’s an easy assumption to make, but in Part 2 of my Critical Control / Barrier / Safeguard series, we explore why this may not be an ideal assumption.
Two related ideas are:
1. The fallacy of independence:
Several controls can share the same power supply, workers, or maintenance process. When there’s a hidden dependency between them and it fails, then ‘separate’ barriers can fail together as a cascade. Many major accidents have played out like this.
2. The fallacy of social redundancy:
The belief that another double-check automatically improves safety. Sometimes it can be more of a performance ritual – the do’er believes the check’er will check, so doesn’t do much of the doing.
Some research provides insights about barrier performance: like, average control implementation sitting only around 57%, with an effectiveness of 51%.
Or from 20 years of mining fatalities finding the dominance of admin controls even following a serious or fatal incident. And in 45% of cases the control wasn’t even effective.
Control verifications can also become quiet, unchallenged, symbolic performances: as in, the form gets completed, but the check doesn’t test the control’s current functionality, nor test the assumptions that made it credible in the first place.
Leveson’s point here is pretty salient – monitor assumptions and not just the control.
Check the episode out – link in comments.
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