Principles for managing barriers in the petroleum industry

Principles for managing barriers in the petroleum industry – the Norwegian approach. Here’s some extract from this 40 page guide: ·     Barriers are “measures intended to detect failure, hazard and accident situations at an early stage, reduce their potential for propagating and limit harm and disruption” ·     “No matter how safely and robustly we design and operate… Continue reading Principles for managing barriers in the petroleum industry

Do your investigations suck? Are you learning about the functionality of critical controls?

Do your investigations suck? Are they exploring the presence and functionality of risk controls? Check out Safe AF podcast #7 (just 9 mins of your life 😉 ) which dives into what investigations explore and ignore – critically, up to 60% of investigations may not evaluate whether risk controls actually functioned as intended. Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/episode/2uyLNSbLmBti5deKFzB630?si=PUipY6ooRUa7EmBBX0po4g… Continue reading Do your investigations suck? Are you learning about the functionality of critical controls?

Safe AF #7: Limits of investigations and blindness to control effectiveness

Are our investigations blinded to the functioning and effectiveness of risk controls? Are our current approaches, and mental models about how safety events occur, defined less by what they unpack and more by what they leave in the dark? This study unpacks these questions, and evaluates how accident investigators consider, or not, the functioning of… Continue reading Safe AF #7: Limits of investigations and blindness to control effectiveness

Impact of Energy-Based Safety Training on Quality of Prejob Safety Meetings and Control of Hazardous Energy in Construction: Multiple Baseline Experiment

This study explored the role of energy-based safety training on the quality of the prestart meetings. Method was a multiple baseline assessment on 10 construction crews in the US and Canada following the training intervention, then measuring the prejob safety brief quality and HECA (High Energy Control Assessment). Background: ·         Construction accounts for about 7%… Continue reading Impact of Energy-Based Safety Training on Quality of Prejob Safety Meetings and Control of Hazardous Energy in Construction: Multiple Baseline Experiment

Barrier / control system failures in the BP Texas City disaster & organisational factors

This paper explored the barrier system (e.g. controls) performance in the genesis of the 2005 BP Texas City disaster. Not much to say  – the images say enough. Some extracts: ·        As per image 1, several organisational factors or management delivery system were central in the poor barrier system performance ·        They propose many of these factors… Continue reading Barrier / control system failures in the BP Texas City disaster & organisational factors

Leveson and Dekker on Reason: How the Critics Got the Swiss Cheese Model Wrong – Andrew Hopkins

Andrew Hopkins in this article defends Reason’s Swiss Cheese Metaphor (SCM) from critiques from both Nancy Leveson and Sid Dekker. Just a few extracts. [** Be on the lookout for next week’s compendium dedicated to Hopkins & Hale] I’m taking no sides – just reporting what’s in the paper: ·        He selects criticisms of Reason’s work… Continue reading Leveson and Dekker on Reason: How the Critics Got the Swiss Cheese Model Wrong – Andrew Hopkins