Page 49 - Serious Incident Prevention How to Achieve and Sustain Accident-Free Operations in Your Plant or Company

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The Barriers to Improvement 27

a systematic process for ensuring unacceptable risks are controlled. Even
captains of “unsinkable” ships need to consider the icebergs.

Overcoming the Barriers

Maintaining the conditions necessary to sustain serious-incident-free
operations may be either driven or restrained by various organizational
forces. One approach to achieving any objective, including safe operations,
is to overwhelm it with the resources needed to drive improvement. Certainly
command-and-control organizations are dependent upon the application of
such resources in sufficient quantity and depth if they are to succeed.
A second, more cost-effective strategy is to complement driving forces
with actions that lower the intensity of restraining forces within the organi-
zation. Actions should be taken to identify barriers that are roadblocks to
success, and to initiate appropriate actions that remove or lower the barri-
ers. For a major construction project, examples of driving forces to help en-
sure safe work could include actions such as mandating safe work as a

RESTRAINING FORCES

Conflicting Priorities
Knowledge Gaps
Resource Limitations
Overconfidence
Lack of Accountability

SERIOUS INCIDENT PREVENTION
SERIOUS INCIDENT PREVENTION

Communications
Policies & Procedures
Employee Involvement
Measurement &
Feedback
Training
Hazard Identification
Audits
Recognition

DRIVING FORCES

FIGURE 2-1. A force field diagram for sustaining serious-incident-free operations.