Page 55 - Serious Incident Prevention How to Achieve and Sustain Accident-Free Operations in Your Plant or Company

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A Proven Process Improvement Model 33

process as a top priority throughout the organization. Ideally, the develop-
ment and implementation of improved safety management processes should
be driven by top management. Top management leadership helps assure that
sufficient resources are available for implementation and thus increases the
probability of favorable recognition for performing the required work.
Nevertheless, lack of a clear upper management mandate to implement
an improved incident prevention process should not be an insurmountable
barrier for the supervisor who desires improvement. In fact, it is relatively
common in companies of all types and sizes to find organizational units
within the company that are “islands of excellence.” In these units, the lead-
ership and commitment of the supervisor is at such a level that achievement
of outstanding results is not dependent upon the boss’s strong, visible sup-
port. These managers find a way to implement an improved safety process,
because it is simply “the right thing to do.” Supervisors and managers at
each level of the organization need to recognize that they are considered
“top management” by their subordinates, and each level of management
must assume a strong leadership role.
Application of the serious incident prevention process model ensures
that management’s investment of time and resources will yield the desired
results.

Element 2: Involve Employees

Full employee involvement is essential to leveraging the organization’s
limited resources, capturing vital employee knowledge, and facilitating em-
ployee ownership of the process. The full benefits of employee involvement
are achieved only when employees have leadership roles in all aspects of de-
veloping, implementing, maintaining, and improving the serious incident
prevention process.
The process model provides effective techniques for leveraging the
power of employee involvement in accomplishing the work required to pre-
vent serious incidents.

Element 3: Understand the Risks
Success in any endeavor requires knowledge of potential risks. Without
a firm understanding of the risks, pitfalls are identified only after they
occur, a “fly-crash-fix-fly” cycle.
With the nonroutine nature of serious incidents, the focus must be on
what can happen rather than what has happened in the past. The argument
that a unit has been operating 10 to 20 years without problems must be
granted only limited consideration in evaluating the potential for a future in-
cident. Past incidents involving Flixboro, Bhopal, and the Exxon Valdez