WITHOUT A CORRECT MANAGEMENT OF HUMAN BEHAVIOR THE RISK ASSESSMENT IS INCOMPLETE.

In almost all the risks considered, human behavior plays a decisive role.

The prevention and protection measures associated with a specific risk (technical, organizational, procedures, training, training, PPE etc.) are designed to reduce the risk.

Without entering into details of the criteria and / or formulas with which the risk is assessed, the application of the prevention and protection measures allows to reduce the initial risk R to the final value R '<R.

In practice, the risk mitigation effectiveness of prevention and protection measures is assessed as: R / R "or R-R".

When the R risk is very high, a relatively high value is associated with the prevention and protection measures, capable of bringing the R risk to a much lower and acceptable R’ value.

In practice, all prevention and protection measures are intended to govern human behavior. Once applied, they assume that the safe behavior is 100%. This is an ideal value rarely found in practice.

Let's make some examples to clarify the concept:

1) To reduce a risk R of eye injury in the use of a disc wheel at a risk R' through the use of glasses against throwing splinters, the assumption that is implicitly made by assigning the value R' is that the correct behavior of wearing glasses is always present, in 100% of cases.

2) To reduce the risk of crushing in the use of a woodworking machine during the quality parameter adjustment activities, a specific work procedure is defined by specialized personnel. Also in this case the risk R will be reduced to the value R’ in the hypothesis that the procedure is respected in 100% of cases and by always specialized personnel.

3) To reduce the risk of investment by a forklift truck in the warehouse area, a training course and a maximum transit speed for the operator is provided. The risk is reduced from R to R' in the event that the maximum speed is respected in 100% of cases, that is, in all transits.

We can continue with many other examples, but I think it is not necessary. In any case, it is clear that the purpose of having PPE, procedures, work instructions, training, technical measures is to govern behavior in order to have only safe behaviors and eliminate risky behaviors.

In the absence of the B-BS protocol, organizations do not accurately measure safe behaviors and have a completely indicative perception of what the real situation is, often overestimating their performance.

The supervision carried out by the supervisors is relatively rare, it is not precise and does not usually lead to structured data for this purpose, trivially because the supervisors also have other tasks, they are often themselves operational and the time dedicated to supervision is limited.

In any case, having 100% of safe behavior is an illusion.

Under normal conditions (without B-BS), in well-managed companies, on the basis of analysis before the implementation of the B-BS protocol, the percentage of safe behaviors varies between 50% and 80%.

Only this data shows how, in ordinary conditions, the prevention and protection measures are not such as to reach the theoretical value of R’, since the application of these measures has a frequency <100%.

The residual risk R’ therefore, resulting after the application of the prevention and protection measures, is under estimated. In addition, an important percentage of risky behaviors that the organization is not usually aware of and which are often responsible for many accidents are not taken into account.

Let's take an example for this last statement: the real exposure to noise of a worker who has to use ear plugs that are actually used in 85% of situations is different from the exposure estimated in the noise risk assessment document .

The risks, without a real control of human behavior, are all underestimated, some of them slightly others of much, according to how much difference there is between when foreseen in the risk assessment document and the actual behavior.

When the risks are fatal or can cause severe injuries, in the absence of an effective behavior control system, there is a risk of having risk assessment documents that report a level of virtual safety far lower than the risk actually present.