Safe As Podcast

Are audits effective checks and verifications of our risk control systems?Are they diving deep into the functionality and effectiveness of systems and practices, and evaluating actual daily, hazardous work? Or, are they mostly rustling paperwork at the expense of real operational hazards?Ref: Hutchinson, B., Dekker, S., & Rae, A. (2024). Audit masquerade: How audits provide comfort rather than treatment for serious safety problems. Safety science, 169, 106348.Feel free to shout me a coffee to

Conventional logic suggests that we fix the gaps that we find in investigations. But is this the case?Is the investigation process more a socially constructed game of sociopolitical whack-a-mole, finding and fixing the things that are easily solved or understandable, or tolerable to the organisation? Lundberg, J., Rollenhagen, C., & Hollnagel, E. (2010). What you find is not always what you fix—How other aspects than causes of accidents decide recommendations for remedial actions. Accident

Is there a connection between fatal and non-fatal accidents, or is it a fallacy to focus on the minor potential events with the hope of managing the major events?Today's study explores these relationships based on 23k reported serious accidents in the Netherlands.Ref: Bellamy, L. J. (2015). Exploring the relationship between major hazard, fatal and non-fatal accidents through outcomes and causes. Safety Science, 71, 93-103.Feel free to shout me a coffee to support my site &podcasts:

How well can Learning Teams function against more traditional Root Cause Analysis techniques?What things do they focus on, what fixes result from the learning activities? Does one focus more on blame and individuals rather than systems factors?Today we explore a paper by Robbins et al., 2021, comparing Learning Teams vs RCAs.If you find these pods useful then please help share on LinkedIn, and subscribe, rate and review on Spotify/Apple etc.Study link:

Are the contributing and causal factors similar between Severe Incidents & Fatalities (SIFs) and non-fatal incidents? Will eliminating the minor potential, low-energy hazards help prevent the major potential hazards?Today we explore the following paper: Bayona, A., Hallowell, M. R., & Bhandari, S. (2024). TheThings That Hurt People Are Not the Same as the Things That Kill People: Key Differences in the Proximal Causes of Low-and High-Severity Construction Injuries. Journalof Construction

Do you trust your accident statistics? Are they accurate reflections of reality, or dangerously misleading? In this episode, we explore the following study which evaluates the extent of accident underreporting:Probst, T. M., & Graso, M. (2013). Pressure to produce = pressure to reduce accident reporting?. Accident Analysis & Prevention, 59, 580-587.Link: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/256084901_Pressure_to_producepressure_to_reduce_accident_reportingFeel free to shout a coffee to