What is the role of people in creating safety or failure? Is human variability (“error” and the like), a ‘threat’ in bow ties, or does it both challenge or ensure success of our controls? This is post 1 of 3 exploring some tenets around human performance in barrier thinking, taken from the CIEHF manual. First… Continue reading Human performance in barrier thinking: problems with “human error” – post 1

What is the relationship between different types of employee voice and silence, and how are these influenced by psychological safety? This systematic review may interest you – as it explored those questions. Not a summary, as you can read the full paper via the link. First, they identified several motivators and inhibitors of employee voice… Continue reading Silence in organizations and psychological safety: a literature review

This study explored the relationship between organisational factors, supervision, preconditions for acts and worker acts via structural equation modelling. 305 Iranian mining accidents were analysed via HFACS. If you look past the rather normative frame of trying to categorise things via loose concepts like unsafe acts/preconditions etc., you’ll find a pretty progressive and sympathetic paper… Continue reading Effects of human and organizational deficiencies on workers’ safety behavior at a mining site in Iran

Controls, barriers, safeguards, degradation controls…I’m currently in a bit of a bow tie frenzy, so here’s another paper talking about bow ties and barrier terminology. This brief 2017 paper discusses the development of a book, seeking to better standardise terminology in bow ties and barriers. Summary to be posted soon. In short, they state that:·        In… Continue reading Bow ties, barrier & control terminology and more

This interesting study from Dr Roberta Selleck analysed 10 years of serious and fatal incident investigation reports from four international construction companies to: i)                   Assess the reliability of their Critical Controls (CCs) ii)                  Assess the factors that affect the reliability of CCs Summary posted next week. CCs are “specific safety barriers, which (i) directly prevent the unplanned… Continue reading Critical Control implementation & failures in fatal and serious construction accidents

** Pitfalls in risk assessment Part 2 ** Here’s the final list of pitfalls in risk assessments in the paper. ·      Failure to identify all hazards associated with a particular activity – this suggests that while discrete hazards or energy sources may be identified, the particular pathways to failures may be missed ·      Failure to fully consider all… Continue reading Pitfalls in risk assessment Part 2

This 2004 paper covered a number of pit falls and misuses in risk assessment. I’ll break it into two posts. Pit falls: ·      Carrying out a risk assessment to support a decision that has already been made (image 2) ·      Using a generic assessment when a site-specific assessment is needed – here a range of different hazards… Continue reading Pitfalls in risk assessment – part 1

This study, drawing on ethnographic data, examined whether hazard reporting acted as a type of extended incident report, allowing for more proactive action. I can’t do this justice, so recommend you read the paper. Note: I’ve skipped a lot of the paper. Data came from a broader 3-month ethnographic project at a water distributor-retailer in… Continue reading Hazard reporting: How can it improve safety?

Is double-checking effective? How independent can human actions be when part of a verification activity? Not much to say here – I found the following excerpts from the CIEHF’s white paper on “Human Factors in Barrier Management” interesting, discussing the potentially misaligned assumptions of independence in verifications. They cover the limitations of independence, how the… Continue reading The problems of double-checking and lack of operator independence in barrier management

It seems there has been a hive of interest for barrier-based approaches, with the ICMM’s Critical Control Management being the most prominent in my neck of the woods. Given its apparent success in generating interest, I thought it worth sharing that barrier-based approaches have a long and sophisticated history in systems engineering and the process/oil… Continue reading Controls, barriers, safeguards – what’s the difference? Does it matter?