Page 44 - Serious Incident Prevention How to Achieve and Sustain Accident-Free Operations in Your Plant or Company

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22 Serious Incident Prevention

Inadequate recognition
Limited line organization ownership
Limited personal experience
Misguided optimism

A Focus on Today’s Problems

Managers and other personnel tend to allocate time and resources to ac-
tivities that relieve current pressures. The importance of serious incident
prevention is generally recognized, but the work necessary to ensure a safe
workplace is sustained may often be treated as deferrable. Unless an inci-
dent actually occurs, failure to properly execute incident prevention work
may result in no undesirable consequences for personnel responsible for the
work. Unfortunately, accountability actions implemented after the occur-
rence of a catastrophic incident do not reverse the damage done.
By viewing the critical work as deferrable, managers fail to embrace
what author Stephen R. Covey refers to as the “Law of the Farm”:

Procrastinating and cramming don’t work on the farm. The cows must be
milked daily. Other things must be done in season, according to natural cy-
cles. Natural consequences must follow violations, in spite of good inten-
tions. We’re subject to natural laws and governing principles—the laws of
the farm and harvest. The only thing that endures over time is the law of the
farm. According to natural laws and principles, I must prepare the ground,
put in the seed, cultivate, weed, and water if I expect to reap a harvest. 1

A manager’s daily schedule tends to fill with meetings, report dead-
lines, and responses to requests from superiors. Many managers simply do
not consistently take the actions needed to adequately support the incident
prevention process. Too often, managers find themselves majoring in re-
sponses to events that appear pressing but which make no significant con-
tribution toward success of the organization’s mission. To sustain long-term
success in the prevention of incidents, managers must assure that the allo-
cation of their time is properly aligned with safe workplace objectives.

Limited Employee Involvement

Identifying the critical work required to succeed in any key perform-
ance area is best accomplished through input from personnel responsible