Making zero work for construction safety in a post-zero world

This study from Sherratt et al. critically discussed theoretical and empirical arguments on the use of zero thinking in construction. They also evaluated performance differences between a sample of zero adopters vs non-adopters in the US.

I’ve skipped a lot – so check out the free paper.

First, they state that “Zero remains the biggest number in occupational safety”

Yet, there is a "paucity of empirical work exploring zero in practice”. Nevertheless, of limited empirical work conducted to date “strongly suggests that zero is not a panacea and has not (to date at least) delivered on its highly ambitious promises”.

Despite the lack of observable results, “catchy branding … a continued and even growing interest in zero amongst the C-Suite, and the seemingly unassailable ethical argument that to accept anything other than zero is to accept unsafety and thus to want people to get hurt, all mean that zero remains both prominent and problematic”.

What is known about zero

They cover the extant research around zero. Most discussions appear in the grey literature – industry magazines and journals, rather than the academic journals.

Zero research tends to follow exploratory designs, showing how its applied in practice over evaluating its impact. But there are exceptions. Young (2014) explored zero in the context of industrial smelting – finding some benefits from the use of zero, but which may have ultimately been attributable to other factors.

Sherratt reported on intel from construction workers, who “largely experienced zero as yet another piece of safety propaganda, with little real consequence on site other than the worrying potential for disengagement and disenchantment with safety management as a whole”.

Despite the paucity of evidence, zero is said to offer “an attractive, powerful, and robust ‘value’ for firms to demonstrate their commitment” – which “ could be considered ‘snake oil for safety”. That is, zero initiatives could be “valorized for what they look and feel like … ?rather than what they actually do for workers facing high-hazard work environments”.

Other work from Sherratt and Dainty analysed four years of UK construction data, finding that “a SIF was actually more likely on sites operating a zero program than on a site that wasn’t – the zero paradox”.

Noting this relationship wasn’t causal, but correlational, it still “fundamentally failed to show any demonstrable pattern of benefit for the use of zero with regard to SIF incidents for adopting firms over this not inconsiderable timeframe”.

Another study from Roberts over 5 years found no discernible benefit of zero messaging by the C-suite.

Much of the existing narrative surrounding zero is said to be theoretical and “centered around the oft-repeated mantra that zero is the only ethical and acceptable goal in safety” Hence, to challenge zero means accepting injuries.

The authors argue that this logic is “highly offensive” for anyone working in safety but is “also a deliberate avoidance of reality”.

Also, zero logics about how all injuries are preventable must not lose sight of the commercial and economic realities that work is undertaken within. That is, no matter our ethical ambitions for future society, all of the willing in the world will not necessarily bring that reality to bear.

Hence, under current economic situations, not all injuries/incidents are likely preventable all of the time. So while having a broad ambition that we should prevent all incidents may be lauded, “it is the bold ‘assumption’ adopted by VZ as a fundamental premise that raises concern” [** that all incidents are preventable].

This assumption, moreover considering the historical context of construction, “cannot be regarded with any credibility when the way industrial work practices actually developed is ?also given due consideration”.

E.g. for instance considering that construction is an old industry, and many of its ways of working, skills and techniques were cemented in the first industrial revolution, and in some ways and professions, hasn’t changed much (e.g. bricklaying).

So, while zero visions might well be commitment strategies rather than literal targets, suggesting that “‘transformation’ can be brought about simply though the sheer force of C-Suite will is not only bold but arguably verging on quixotic”.

Further, without restricting the way work is undertaken and why, the same hazards and SIFs will endure and “no amount of zero-related safety propaganda can change that”.

Legal perspectives and reasonability of zero

Next they discuss the legal context and zero – I’ve skipped most of this section. However, they discuss concepts like reasonably practicable as in the UK and Australia.

They suggest that in contrast to legal expectations, “zero is not reasonable; it is an absolute”.

Zero thinking “does not allow for evaluations of hazard, harm, and risk to be balanced with consequential efforts in terms of time and money”.

They say that zero proponents brush these discussions off with a comment that zero isn’t a literal oal but a process or journey. According to the authors, this counter argument ignores the fact that we can’t know in advance how something will be understood by its audience. E.g. while the intention of zero is for high-level commitment, it inevitably ends up a numbers game.

They suggest one improvement over absolute zero could be a triage system. For instance, SIF programs take a triage approach, focusing on the most critical high-energy hazard interactions. Perhaps, then, an improvement could be on zero SIFs or zero uncontrolled high energy hazards, over absolute zero.

Zero SIFs, while not perfect or ideal by any stretch of the imagination nor evidence (as recognised by the authors), could “create the potential for zero to work more effectively, particularly in industries such as construction where minor incidents are so commonplace that to seek absolute zero immediately disengages the workforce (Sherratt, 2014) and is seen as utterly unachievable”.

Evaluation of zero adopters vs non-adopters

They compared SIFs between top 15 US construction companies – 6 adopting zero harm and the remaining 9 that had not.

Findings were that:

·???????? Zero companies had 10 fatal accidents compared to 16 in non-zero

·???????? Zero companies had 7 serious injuries compared to 23 for non-zero

While at first glance this suggests that zero harm companies performed better, statistical significance testing indicated no significant differences between the samples.

Therefore, statistically, “there is no difference in the SIF outcomes between the zero and non-zero companies”. Given the sample size limitations (and hence limits in statistical analyses), no clear evidence for or against the use of zero is indicated.

That is, the equivocal state of evidence for or against zero are “simply unable to support the proposal that the use of zero improves safety management and performance in the field”.

Saying this, they highlight the limitations of the statistical comparison:

1) the lack of significance may be a factor of the small sample size,

2) use of SIF data are problematic due to their statistical rarity, e.g. SIF events “do not happen often enough to enable meaningful statistical analyses and are in fact invalid as a metric of safety more generally”.

Nevertheless, these findings and previous studies “certainly does not provide a compelling case for the use of zero within safety management practice”.

Why should zero work?

The authors propose a more useful question instead of whether zero does or does not work, based on the limited evidence, is instead why should zero work?

They cover some points about why we should be sceptical about the possibility of zero mantras leading to substantive change.

For instance: “Why should hyperbolic safety propaganda work when it is dumped into an industry that historically does not valorize its workers and has to operate within tight economic constraints”.

Making zero work

Next they provide some suggestions on how to make zero work in construction. I’ve skipped most of this section, but briefly:

1)? “simply remove the word from the safety management lexicon” and that “Zero may be too tainted by the myriad problems”. This may not be as simple as it sounds, though.

2) Fundamentally change the way we plan and organise construction work – another difficult endeavour

3) Triage by focusing on SIFs rather than the current zero focus on all incidents and injuries. This focus would “enable focus on what has been termed the ‘Stuff That Kills You’ (STKY) on jobsites”.

They also observe the similarities or overlaps between SIF initiatives and HOP/Adaptive philosophies, such as focusing more on the positives rather than mostly on the negatives, or absences (unsafety).

For instance, “ With safety recently operationalized as the presence of controls rather than the absence of injury (Erkal & Hallowell, 2023), it may be that zero will naturally diminish as safety statistics such as Total Recordable Injury Rate (TRIR) become obsolete”.

Link in comments.

Authors: Sherratt, F., Harch, D., & Perez, A. (2024). Making zero work for construction safety in a post-zero world.?Journal of Safety Research,?91, 193-200.