I was
attracted to last night's ICE and Costain Prestige Health and Safety Lecture at
Great George Street by one word - Simplicity.
A lot of what I've been thinking
about and doing for the last couple of year has been around the fact that life
is already complicated enough without us adding to it. The Design Principles are
an attempt to cut through all those processes (that I either don't know about or
don't follow) and to try an express something simpler that we all 'get' and actually 'do' all of
the time.
There were three good speakers on behavioural safety, but the first, Gareth Llewellyn from Network Rail resonated with me the most. Up until recently Network Rail had over 1600 standards and procedures around safety (four to do with the right colour orange for safety gear). As a result they had over 4000 non-compliances. What sort of message did that send out to their employees at the sharp end, down at track level amongst the trains?
Working with the support of Trade
Unions they have now agreed 11 "Lifesaving
Rules" - clear messages that address
the vast majority of their risks. Which are:
Contact with
trains:
- Always have a valid safe system
of work in place before going on or near the line.
Working with
electricity:
- Always have a valid permit to
work where required.- Always test before applying earths.
- Never assume equipment is isolated – always test before touch.
Working at
height:
- Unless it is clear other
protection is in place, never work at height without a safety
harness.- Always use equipment for working at heights that is fit for purpose.
Working moving
equipment:
- Never enter the agreed exclusion
zone, unless directed to by the person in charge.
Driving:
- Always wear a seat belt while in
a moving vehicle and always obey the speed limit.- Never use a hand-held device or programme any hands-free device while you are driving a road vehicle.
Taking
responsibility:
- Never undertake an activity
unless you have been trained, assessed as competent and have the right
equipment.- Never drive or work while under the influence of drugs or alcohol.
I understand that - and
apparently the feedback is that Network Rail's teams do as well. This is a great example of
removing unnecessary complexity and there are strong parallels with what we have
done with the Design Principles.
Network Rail's next stage was to
create a culture where reporting was encourages and reporting. However, this was
not focused on making sure the guilty could be punished though. Only 10% of
incidents were deliberate of malicious. 90% were due to system failures and the
feedback received meant that something could be done to address these problems.
Beyond that Network Rail worked
with the Unions and asked them to set what the consequences for infringements
should be. This has removed many debates about 'fairness' and everyone
understands the consequences of their actions – a key aspect of developing a
safety culture.
A few additional fun
soundbites to think about:
“Nobody has ever been
regulated into a world class safety culture.”
“The highest standards we can
expect are the lowest standards we personally exhibit.”
"If you don't like the cost of compliance, try non-compliance".
And the weight loss analogy:
For success you need to do the right thing all the time and check once a week.
So why do often stand on the scales daily and agonise about what we ate last
night? Less measurement and more behaviour!
