Safety Conversations

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Welcome to safetyconversations.com

We are interested in all aspects of behavioural or behaviour based safety training and in sharing good practice wherever possible - from complacency to dynamic risk assessment, from frontline intervention to leadership behaviours, from personal responsibility and accountability to safety culture. We welcome contributions to our blog to encourage sharing and debate. We hope you find it useful.

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Forthcoming Events

Think Again - A Safety Forum featuring a live dramatisation of the BP Texas City disaster. Wednesday 6th October 2010 at The Criterion Theatre, Piccadilly, London. Presented by AKT Productions Ltd

AKT Productions Ltd invites you to join senior business leaders to consider what organisations can learn from Texas City and Deepwater Horizon, in the context of leadership behaviour, accountability and culture. The event will feature an introduction by Andy Rose, Group Managing Director, Balfour Beatty plc.

Click here to reserve your place now!

Latest Blogs

Sat 21 Aug 2010
CROSSING THE LINE
In a chilling but not unfamiliar scenario, we read this week about a heavy vehicle driving over an unmanned rail crossing and colliding with a passenger train. Virtually every passenger was injured, some seriously. The crossing was known as a User-Worked Crossing with Telephone (UWC-T)[1]. According to news reports and statements from Network Rail, the driver did not use the telephone to contact signallers[2]. Obviously there will be a British Transport Police investigation, alongside one by the Rail Accident Investigation Board, so it would be wrong to accept this as fact and blame the driver. But let’s attempt a working hypothesis and use it to explore an insidious and common factor in incidents – the normalisation of deviance. This phrase was coined by Sociologist Diana Vaughan with regard to the causes of the 1986 Space Shuttle Challenger disaster[3]. As is well known, one of the solid rocket boosters failed catastrophically due to O-ring seal damage. The design of the O ring seal raised concerns even before the first shuttle flight in 1981, but construction continued and the shuttle flew – successfully. Despite evidence of damage to the O- rings after each shuttle launch, a...

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Sun 15 Aug 2010
TO KNOW BETTER?
I am going to make a very unhappy prediction. I predict that, unless there is an unprecedented step-change in safety, the next person to lose their life in a workplace incident will be a man aged 55, directly employed on a construction project in the North of England. The cause of death will be a fall from height. Of course I could be entirely wrong about the timing, but at some point in the next year there will be a report which sadly echoes this prediction. How can I be so sure? The statistics point the way. According to the HSE[1], during the reporting period 2009 to 2010, there were 151 fatalities. Of those, 41 were in construction, of which 25 were falls from height. 8 of those crossed the country from Hull, via Leeds and Doncaster, to Bury and Skelmersdale. It might fairly be argued that statistics don’t prove anything, and can be made to fit any hypothesis, however tenuous. In addition, many people are aware that construction suffers a high level of fatalities, and that falls from height are all too common. So my prophecy, in most of its aspects, could probably have been made...

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Mon 9 Aug 2010
HEALTH AND SAFETY GONE MAD
A few weeks ago I took a black cab ride in London. The cabbie asked me what line of business I was in. I was on my way to facilitate a behavioural safety workshop, and the easiest way to describe my job that day was to say, ‘I work in safety’. With no apparent concern that he may be offending his fare-paying passenger, he immediately launched into a diatribe about ‘all this ‘ealth and safety rubbish’, which was punctuated by statements like, ‘I mean, it’s madness. They don’t allow kids to play football anymore.’ This was news to me. As the driver cut across a cyclist, and caused a pedestrian to leap back from the edge of the pavement, he continued, ‘Did you know they’ve banned candyfloss?’ Can you believe it? Candyfloss! I’m not joking! ‘Cos kids might poke themselves in the eye wiv a stick! These jobsworths - they’ve gone mad ‘aven’t they?’ I politely doubted that candyfloss had been banned, but being a good listener is not a requirement for passing ‘The Knowledge’, and the driver went on with his rant. Fortunately my journey was short, and I only had to hear about bonfire night...

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