Safety-I or Safety-II, that's not the question

About a week ago Dom Cooper posted a paper on what's called the new view. The abstract states:

Abstract

Relatively new to safety, Resilience Engineering (RE) is known by various pseudonyms: Safety-II, Human & Organizational Performance (HOP) and Safety Differently. Collectively termed New-View, they have created a stir amongst OSH practitioners by challenging them to view key areas of occupational safety in a different way: [1] how safety is defined; [2] the role of people in safety; and [3] how businesses focus on safety.

When subject to critical scrutiny, New-View's major tenets are shown to be a collection of untested propositions (ideas, rules, and principles). New-view’s underlying RE philosophy is predicated on repeatedly testing the boundary limitations of systems until a failure occurs, which paradoxically requires more risk controls that create the very problems New-View criticizes and attempts to address – constraints, complexity, rigidity, and bureaucracy. This continuous threat-rigidity cycle indicates New-View’s raison d'etre is somewhat circular. New-View entirely lacks any new associated practical methodologies for improving safety performance: it uses traditional Safety-1 methodologies to tackle actual safety problems. Moreover, no published, peer-reviewed empirical evidence demonstrates whether or not any aspect of New-View’s propositions are valid. Currently we don’t know how, or if, New-View improves safety performance per se, or if it reduces or eliminates incidents/injuries. The extant Safety-1 literature suggests that New-View’s propositions lack substance. The inescapable conclusion, therefore, is ‘the emperor has no clothes’ and that ideology and emotion has triumphed over science and practice. It is also clear that the OSH profession has an immense crisis of ethics across its entire landscape.

It's an interesting read with a conclusion that will have some debate. I wanted to share a personal example. For me one where I used both the ideas behind what's described as old and new views these days.

Somewhere in 2017, I walked out of my boss’s office after accepting a cultural change challenge called ‘dropped objects’. The statistics went through the roof, everyone wanted to do something about it, no one really knew how.

I was convinced I knew. And if not, I was dedicated to finding out.

Following the old view of Safety-I I started my journey by doing some statistics. Twenty-six incidents were reported in the last six months, with a staggering 68% that could result in the loss of body parts or worst-case scenario, death.

To perform these statistics, I used the data entered in our reporting system and the splat calculator. Safety-I all over again, and the first time I stumbled on its limits.

In order to calculate the potential impact of a falling object, Dave Anderson, a mountaineer, developed a calculation model called "The Splat Calculator". In this model, the height and weight of the object are entered. The result is expressed in Joules and expresses the amount of energy during the impact of a "blunt" object.

The splat calculator was further developed in the industry and called the drop calculator. Its operation is quite simple. You enter two things:

·????????Height difference between where the object started to fall and where it stopped;

·????????and the weight.

At the press of a button, the drop calculator calculates the outcome.

·????????Green zone: fatality

·????????Yellow zone: Major

·????????Orange zone: Minor

·????????Red zone: Slight

Question: To what extent is the outcome of the values in the drop calculator representative for the objective determination of the potential damage?

1.????Pitfall 1: The height and the weight

Both are mostly estimations. Only rarely is an object really weighed, something you should do. Moreover, measuring the height is only possible if you know exactly where the object started to fall.

Applying an estimated height and weight in the drop calculator is therefore the first pitfall.

2.????Pitfall 2: The trajectory

We tend to assume that an object always drops in a straight line. What we often forget is the impact on the trajectory, if that object were to hit something along the way. That impact can cause an object to change its trajectory. This phenomenon is called deflection.

With deflection, you need to look for:

·????????The height at which the object began to fall.

·????????The height at which the object first hits something.

·????????How far the object deflected.

Deflection is not included in the theoretical drop calculator. Making an estimate between the height of the first impact and where the damage was caused and using that in the drop calculator as the starting point of the trajectory, is a second pitfall.

3.????Pitfall 3: Arbitrary correction factors

If a two-kilo object hits a person from ten meters, the theory will tell you that it has been a fatality. Practical examples from the working environment will show, however, that sometimes workers do not sustain any injuries by wearing PPE such as a helmet.

So, there are certain barriers that may influence the impact.

Many companies see here an opportunity to apply a correction factor, assuming that this correction factor would be the same for each barrier.

Pitfall three is the arbitrarily determined correction factor that is generally applied to the dropalculator.

4.????Pitfall 4: The 'personal' correction factor

The damage to the human body will not only depend on the weight of the falling object and the height it was at rest. It will also vary depending on:

·????????the location of the impact on the human body (head, shoulder, arm, ...)

·????????and the shape of the object (sharp, blunt, ...).

·????????The way the object impacts the human body.

·????????The temptation to distill a personal correction factor after one's own assessment, based on the combination of the three data mentioned above, and apply it to the outcome of the drop calculator, is the fourth pitfall.

5.????Fifth pitfall: the choice between theory and practice

The drop calculator is a theoretical approach that does not consider:

·????????Which part of the body was hit;

·????????what shape the falling object had;

·????????and what part of the object was in contact with the body part.

·????????It also does not take deflection into account.

Moreover, it is not always possible to determine the height of the starting point of a falling object.

This makes it impossible to perform a precise calculation but rather an interpretation of the impact that falling objects can cause.

The advantage of the theoretical drop calculator is that, if everyone used it in the same way, we could objectify the subjectively determined impact within companies and sectors by comparing them statistically.

Not using the same theoretical drop calculator for statistical data on the subject is the fifth pitfall.

I knew the downside, but also saw the upside of things. One can argue that not all incidents have been reported. Or that these twenty-six incidents were just a minor fraction of all tasks performed on height without having any dropped objects.

Well, my aim here was to reduce these twenty-six that were reported. For me, that is my role as a (safety) worker within my company.

I presented my findings to the board and proposed to schedule meetings between operating personnel, both our own and third parties. During these meetings I didn’t bring up any of the pitfalls, we discussed the incidents that had happened. How we felt and as such the awareness grew.

The first tilting point in each meeting was when a scaffolder started talking. They all said the same. That they were using tools that helped them to prevent objects to become dropped objects. And all of them were honest about the perks. “In the past, when my hammer fell, I had to walk down, look for it, go back up… It saves me a lot of time. And when you see a hammer falling into the direction of one of your colleagues, you know it helps.”

The second one was the question: “What do you think is the biggest challenge you face every day concerning this topic?” All workers said it was the hoisting of materials.

At the end of each meeting, someone from an external company presented a lot of tools that could help my colleagues with the challenge at hand. All who wanted to try out some stuff could. The agreement was easy: if you test, you also evaluate. Not a difficult evaluation. The question was ‘Will you use this?’ The answers were “yes”, “no” and “Of no importance to me”. If they wanted, they could comment. That was old view all over again.

But what I did there and then, during those meetings, was apply the Diffusion of Innovation theory. That’s safety-II for you. I guess. Making sure I get those innovators and early adopters on board. Working on context and making people more aware of the daily situations they are in. Understanding that things (could) go more often right than wrong.

During a second meeting with my board, I really pushed for the idea I had to face this challenge heads on. Change is never hard if you do it properly. The more you ask from people, that goes against what it is they want, the harder change becomes.

I used one example as my key argument. Studies had showed that you can reduce up to 70% of your incidents by providing your workers with a tool they can use to store their work tools. We had asked to test three possibilities: a backpack, a safety bucket, and a shoulder bag. And the evaluations showed that there was an appetite for all three. My board told me to pick one. I argued and asked them why we would impose one when the outcome of the evaluations prove that some of the workers would never use it if it didn’t fit their (personal) needs? Why would we reduce the potential of a 70% reduction in dropped object incidents?

And I had another ace upon my sleeve called ‘the procedure’. The more you write in a procedure, the harder it becomes to make it work. As someone with 25 operational experiences, that was the case for me. So, I explained to my board that if we would impose certain tools, we would need to write rules about everything. You need to use this in that particular situation and don’t use it if the situation is a bit different. That’s old view again. Safety-I: prevention from the view of what can go wrong. I turned it around. I only wanted two basic rules in my procedure:

1.??????It’s a worker’s responsibility to make sure no more objects come dropping down

2.??????In order to do this every worker can choose from a variety of tools to his/her needs

Again, an interesting discussion with my board, but the idea started to grow on them. And in the end, doing something would always be better than doing nothing. Things were dropping out there!

So, we set up the program. Made sure everyone knew about the tools one could order. Where and how to order it. As people had tested before, they started explaining to others how things should be used.

We found a solution for the hoisting challenges. Finetuned it by listening to the worker's feedback and acting on what we had heard.

And so, it began.

Six months after it was time to do a test. I took the department's camera and walked around during the big shutdown we had. Backpacks, safety buckets and a shoulder bag were all around. As were other tools.

After a year only 3 incidents were reported, and all three of them concerned a piece of structure that came down. So, in the end, no more dropped objects were reported. Is this a guarantee that we reduced it to zero? No. Is this a possible way to address challenges: yes.

For me, it always has, and always will be the way to proceed. Call it safety-I, safety-II, old or new view: you need to look at what you have, what you can do, are willing to do and make sure you go all the way to reach your goal(s).

Then change is imminent.?