ABSTRACT Designers can contribute to enhancing the safety of construction work by considering how their decisions impact on both the physical environment in which construction workers operate and the means and methods they use. To do so, however, designers require knowledge about safety hazards on site and the opportunity to examine their designs early in… Continue reading Safety by design: dialogues between designers and builders using virtual reality

This is an interesting article from Catherine Tinsley, Robin Dillon & Peter Madsen. I’ve posted a heap of their research. Their work strongly flies in the face of conventional wisdom of tracking near misses. That is, rather than near misses being clear warning signs in advance of major events just waiting to be found and… Continue reading Mini-post: Near misses & disaster

This study used qualitative methods (surveys, interviews) in a number of healthcare and aviation settings to understand how organisational reforms, policies etc. influence efficiency/safety trade-offs in local practices. In providing context on why this is an important facet to understand, it’s been argued that “it is impossible to prioritize both safety and performance goals and… Continue reading Safety First!? Organizational Efficiency Trends and their Influence on Safety

This studied how subtle linguistic wording in accident descriptions influences the allocation of blame and punishment. Researchers manipulated wording in the accidents into either: agentive or nonagentive verbs. For example, he ripped the costume (agentive) versus the costume ripped (nonagentive) or she toppled the candle (agentive) versus the candle toppled (nonagentive). Some previous research was… Continue reading Subtle linguistic cues influence perceived blame and financial liability

ABSTRACT This paper reports on a study of practices used to learn from incidents with the aim of improving safety performance in a Scandinavian refinery. Data for the study was collected during five months of fieldwork at the refinery and interviews with 70 refinery employees. In this paper, we examine how managers, engineers and operators… Continue reading Learning from incidents: Practices at a Scandinavian refinery

I found these comments pretty interesting from Robert Bea (a professor emeritus in engineering who studied a lot of complex systems and disasters). They argue that traditional risk estimations underestimated the actual consequences of major failures by a factor of 100 or more. He discusses the area of sociotechnical systems (complex infrastructure systems, CIS, in… Continue reading Mini-post: Sociotechnical risk estimations

For those that haven’t read the NASA Columbia space shuttle accident reports, it has some great discussions around organisational factors in modern, complex environments. One element relates to the communication of safety-critical information (images below from chapter 7 of the CAIB report, pg.191). According to Edward Tufte, the PowerPoint slides prepared to report on the… Continue reading Mini-post: Communicating danger

This study interviewed a number of senior managers with a client and contractor in engineering construction on a range of health and safety issues. This included accident reporting systems, behaviour and near misses, performance indicators and auditing, and health monitoring. It’s over 20 years old, but interesting to see how many things don’t seem to… Continue reading The quality of accident and health data in the construction industry: Interviews with senior managers

This was really interesting. It studied CEO investment style on workplace safety. Two styles were included: underconfident and overconfident CEOS. Underconfident CEOs are those that are less certain about future company value or performance and thus underinvest in order to maximise short-term value. Underinvestment has been shown to contribute to workplace accidents. Underinvestment can involve… Continue reading Safety First – Overconfident CEOs and Reduced Workplace Accidents

[This is an update and repost of an older post, which had a different format back then] ABSTRACT “As we approach the thirtieth anniversary of the Challenger Disaster (January 28, 2016), how do we continue to educate current and future leaders on how to make decisions that involve significant risk and uncertainty with the lessons… Continue reading New Ways to Learn from the Challenger Disaster: Almost 30 Years Later