Safe As 36: How audits fail prior to major accidents

How do audits fail to avert major disasters? What do investigations after a major accident say about the performance, or failures, of audits? Today’s article is Hutchinson, B., Dekker, S., & Rae, A. (2024). How audits fail according to accident investigations: A counterfactual logic analysis. Process Safety Progress, 43(3), 441-454. Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/episode/0GiQ6QeAYGFZhxmppb5n3k?si=gB3Hvpi3RpaPtLsGChZSZw Make sure to subscribe to… Continue reading Safe As 36: How audits fail prior to major accidents

Systems thinking, culture of reliability and safety

Fantastic read from Nick Pidgeon on how systems approaches, Turner’s MMD, sensemaking, failure and learning intersect to create or mask ‘safety’. Can’t do it justice, so just a few extracts: ·        “By 1990, it was clear that the .. intellectual focus was less on analysing how past accidents had occurred .. and more towards .. how… Continue reading Systems thinking, culture of reliability and safety

Foresights before disaster: An ode to Barry Turner

So while I don’t often explicitly refer to the late Barry Turner’s work on LinkedIn or regularly post his articles, he’s been the most influential researcher on my own work and is tacitly embedded in my language and thinking. If you’ve heard of Man-Made Disasters, disaster incubation, perceptual horizon, decoy phenomena, failures of foresight (and… Continue reading Foresights before disaster: An ode to Barry Turner