The cost of getting safety right

There's still time to register for the Engineers Australia webinar tomorrow, where I'll be talking about the cost of safety. This is part of their "Thought leaders" series - even non members can register for free right up until the start of the webinar.

I've never been a fan either of the "no amount of money is worth a human life" or "safety doesn't cost much compared to the cost of having an accident". Both of these mantras require the unfounded assumption that every thing we do in the name of safety has some sort of measurable, demonstrable positive effect.

I believe that it is both possible and reasonable to make a strong business case for safety improvement. But this case must be founded on realistic estimates of what can be achieved through an improvement program. Risk reduction is almost impossible to quantify unless we know the current likelihood and severity of an accident, as well as the likelihood and severity after the safety improvement. That's a very, very uncertain basis for a claim of business value.

On the other hand, we are already spending a lot on safety. We know how much that is costing us. We also know that we could reduce those costs, if and only if we knew which safety activities were effective and ineffective. Even if we didn't decide to take those gains as cash savings, we could redirect them towards other, more effective safety activities. Information about the effectiveness of safety activities has genuine and quantifiable business value. That value means that money and time spent on measuring effectiveness can provide an immediate return on investment, with an extremely high tail of returns in future years.

Tune in to hear more, or to argue with me in question time if you don't agree.