Building a culture of Safety.

This past weekend we all held our collective breath as many of us unexpectedly witnessed a truly frightening event live. An event that could so easily have ended in tragedy but to the surprise and welcome relief of us all the tragedy was averted. On Sunday afternoon I settled down to partake in what has become one of my favourite past times, watching the Formula 1 Grand Prix. Whilst many have become bored of the consistent Lewis Hamilton show, with his master class leaving little chance for any real challenge, I confess that my obsession has become real. Tuning into as much of the free practice sessions between work on Fridays as can be managed, no other plans could possibly be made during qualifying on Saturday and culminating in the big event on a Sunday not to mention closely following the constant feed of information during the week. My wife, bless her for accommodating it, has had to endure many an excited exclamation from the living room but not without a sigh and a roll of the eyes.

This weekend however produced a different kind of gasp from both myself and my wife. You see as many would know, as racers pull off from the grid with breakneck acceleration and come into the first corner the inevitable result is some sort of drama. The drivers run out of space but not ambition, often coming into contact with each other at high speeds and sometimes even crashing in spectacular fashion, making the start of the race one of the most exciting parts to watch. Nobody wants to see someone get injured however so this weekend at the Bahrain GP when Romain Grosjean the Haas team driver lost control of his vehicle coming out of the 3rd corner and flying into the barrier at 137MPH experiencing an eye watering 53Gs on impact, ripping the car completely in half engulfing it in a ball of flames, the mood changed. We instinctively knew that this was not the usual type of first corner drama and through the ensuing silence my mind asked me if I had just witnessed someone lose their life on live television. Long minutes dragged on, the FIA refusing to show replays of the crash until there was some confirmation of the driver’s safety. To the observer it seemed impossible that any human could survive something like that. Soon enough, amazingly and much to the relief of all the onlookers we were shown images of brave safety officials fighting back the flames as Romain leapt over the barriers and into relative safety. Later it was confirmed that he had been evacuated to hospital where he was treated for burns on his hands and bruising to his ribs. To walk away from a crash like that with relatively minor injuries considering the magnitude of the peril that presented itself in that instant is an absolute testament to how far safety has come in Formula 1.

At this point many of us reflect on just how lucky the driver was to survive this, referencing his guardian angels. Without discounting any luck which was most certainly still present on his side the wonderful truth is that much of this is not really luck but design and this brings me back to the reason for my obsession with this sport. To me and many others, Formula 1 represents the pinnacle of continuous improvement. As Paddy Lowe the man responsible for technical operation at Mercedes in 2014 said “In Formula 1 standing still is tantamount to extinction.”. You see everything in F1 follows an optimisation loop, with a key question of, “how can we do this better?” at the heart of almost every decision and viewing every failure or problem as an opportunity to improve.

F1 in the 1960’s and 70s was an incredibly dangerous sport as advances in technology had lead engine performance and car speed to new heights but unfortunately safety was left behind. These new faster more powerful cars meant that racing came with the very real risk of injury or even death thankfully however it was decided that this was just not good enough and so started the same process of iterative development that lead us to the level of safety that we see in Formula 1 cars today. But it is not just the cars that are safe, in Saturdays race it took just 9 seconds after impact for the safety car to arrive on the scene at the crash and 17 seconds for fire extinguishers to start extinguishing the fire, after 29seconds the driver was completely clear of the wreckage. It takes a phenomenal number of pieces in the puzzle to work in complete harmony to achieve this, when asked for comment moments after the safety car returned from the incident FIA doctor Ian Roberts who helped the driver from the flames played down the heroic role stating that he was just doing his job, this highlights something incredibly important it shows that safety is not something extra but rather a it is a culture. Safety car driver Alan van der Merwe said “Ian and I will do very small things which we think would have bought us some more time or some more margin”. Again reflecting the small incremental continuous improvement culture that Formula 1 is so well known for.

Lets now take a look at how this reflects in the manufacturing industry, we will not entertain any discussion about budget because a life is a life and no job justifies going home from work in any other physical state than you arrived in. Many companies agree to this and so they put together a HSE team and say right off you go, with the safety team now somehow being responsible for safety. To some extent this is true but the problem is that this often creates an "us vs them" scenario with many employees rolling their eyes every time their work get stymied by a safety process, at best slowing the process down at worst leading to safety being circumnavigated when the safety team are not looking. Of course, the safety team do help you to get everything in order just in time for that all important safety audit, this is important and helpful but is that really what the goal is here? No, the goal is to ensure employee safety with no exception. The starting point is accepting this fact yourself, the second is developing a culture where everyone accepts that they themselves are responsible for safety and then you will start to see your safety team developing results you could never have dreamed of. You can also expect that these results will have minimal impact on production because contrary to popular belief it is not one or the other but rather all the pieces of the puzzle working together. Many will say well that is easier said than done and indeed culture change can seem insurmountable at the beginning but as the proverb goes the only way to eat an elephant is one bite at a time. So here are a few tips:

Start every engagement with a note on safety however small, it can be about the workplace or the home but it’s important to keep it front of mind.

Review the data from your shopfloor, if you don’t have safety data then start by getting some. As a starting point consider learning about the Heinrich Pyramid and how this can help you categorize safety.

Transparency, be transparent with everything safety this again puts safety front of mind it also allows people to reflect on their own behavioral safety and sets new targets for improvement.

Safety is an important metric, use it! Report on the performance at various levels and link this to goals against which individuals can be measured.

Encourage recording of safety engagement both positive and negative, review this data and track individuals performance against it.

Conduct detailed Root Cause Analysis for any safety incident, and take actions against the root cause. Publish this information to the wider business, again full transparency. The reason that this is so important is because if we hide this information, we fail to learn from it.

Be careful when punishing safety incidents, we do not want negligence but even more we do not want people to hide safety incidents robbing us of the opportunity to learn and improve.

If Formula 1 in the 1960s had listened to everyone that believed it was not possible, we probably would not be watching the sport today and we certainly wouldn’t be watching it with the relative peace of mind that the crashes in the 1st corner would not be fatal.

This article by no means seeks to completely cover every safety topic, this is nuanced and unique to every environment but I suggest that by taking a continuous improvement lens and building a safety culture we can ensure that there is no need to fear safety incidents happening and when they do happen that we are prepared to deal with them in a world class fashion. Contact us at Dobb Industries on [email protected] or visit our website to see how we can help your business on implementing a continuous improvement culture where Safety Comes First. 

Image Credit: @F1