This will be familiar for many of us involved in tenders and vetting new subcontractors. It studied 52 safety prequalification surveys used in the construction industry to identify the types of questions asked. [NB. I’ve used the authors distinctions between leading and lagging indicators, even though I have quite some issue with the delineations, as… Continue reading The Gap Between Tools and Best Practice: An Analysis of Safety Prequalification Surveys in the Construction Industry
A capacity index to replace flawed incident-based metrics for worker safety (P2/2)
Part 2/2 This continues the summary from yesterday (link to part 1 in comments). With the prior research covered, next the authors move on to their capacities index. Noting, however, that this is still a collaborative work in progress for the authors. In the paper they’ve listed the capacities, along with some suggested ways to… Continue reading A capacity index to replace flawed incident-based metrics for worker safety (P2/2)
A capacity index to replace flawed incident-based metrics for worker safety (P1/2)
A new paper from Sid Dekker and Michael Tooma. This explored a new “capacity index” that combines the presence of capacities (under a S-II / SD / resilience engineering perspective) and duty of care under health and safety law, as an alternative to existing injury frequency rates. Given the length of this paper, I can… Continue reading A capacity index to replace flawed incident-based metrics for worker safety (P1/2)
Different ways of perceiving risk and safety on construction sites and implications for safety cooperation
This study explored the different ways that individuals and groups in construction perceived safety and risk and how these perceptions influenced behaviours and practices related to safety cooperation. Over 4 months, 36 semi-structured interviews and 36 days of observations were undertaken across two construction projects. First they cover a fair bit of background literature on… Continue reading Different ways of perceiving risk and safety on construction sites and implications for safety cooperation
Individual latent error detection: Simply stop, look and listen
This is another study on Latent Error Detection (LED), something I posted on a while back. Individual LED (I-LED) describes a process where people spontaneously recover system failures by remembering to complete some missed step or action. E.g. suddenly wondering if you left the gas on at home when leaving for work and then going… Continue reading Individual latent error detection: Simply stop, look and listen
The Social construction of workarounds
This chapter may be difficult to get, but explores how workarounds come to be and spread via two separate observational studies. Workarounds are defined as “informal, idiosyncratic approaches to circumnavigate a process block” (p8). Prior research highlighted that across 36 hospitals, nurses spent 12% of their work time working around operational failures and constraints. Workarounds… Continue reading The Social construction of workarounds
The problem with red, amber, green: the need to avoid distraction by random variation in organisational performance measures
This was an interesting little discussion paper about two topics that I hold dear: my disdain for traffic light reporting indicators, and my massive love for anything Deming-related (seriously, Deming was a genius and his insights in my opinion are just as relevant now as they ever were). This looked at the misuse of traffic… Continue reading The problem with red, amber, green: the need to avoid distraction by random variation in organisational performance measures
How traditional construction safety performance indicators fail to capture the reality of safety
This brief discussion paper explored some limitations of different safety performance indicator types based on an extensive review of the literature. Based on their review, they identified and discussed three indicator types which are based on a safety management system (SMS) model of measurement: outcome, audit and leading indicators. Outcome measures: Authors discuss that the… Continue reading How traditional construction safety performance indicators fail to capture the reality of safety
What the Death Star can tell us about ergonomics methods
This is a really cool read. The objective was evaluating whether two ergonomic methods could reveal the Death Star’s critical thermal exhaust port flaw. Notably, it uses an interesting fictional example from the film to tell an important narrative for real-world application. The methods were:1) HE-HAZOP (Human Error Hazard and Operability) analysis; said to represent the… Continue reading What the Death Star can tell us about ergonomics methods
Root cause analysis and its effects on audits judgments and decisions in an integrated audit
As a way to bring some balance to the force with all of the critical research I’ve posted lately, which frankly, doesn’t give me much confidence to trust root cause analysis (RCA) methods (I’ve posted about four other studies highlighting the questionable ability of RCA methods to improve outcomes), this empirically studied some of the… Continue reading Root cause analysis and its effects on audits judgments and decisions in an integrated audit
SafetyInsights.org 