Lessons Learnt…?

I would like to pose a question, or questions: are OHS professionals and the community in general, in all honesty, learning and applying the lessons we are being taught from workplace events?

Are we, or our organisations, being truly effective in preventing the recurrence of events in our workplaces, work processes or activities?

Do we, in truth, actually prevent risk before it has the opportunity to arise, or do we at best eliminate it once it does?

Most, if not all, will answer “yes, yes and yes”. And mean it. But let us take a good, hard look in the mirror.

Almost every day, most of us will become aware of another work-related fatality, another court case won or lost, another event which has resulted in significant harm to person, property, environment – or a combination thereof. What makes these events of note? Continue reading “Lessons Learnt…?”

Half price psychosocial hazard books

Rarely does SafetyAtWorkBlog recommend the purchase of books but Federation Press is offering 50% off any Willan Publishing titles through to 17 December 2010. For those unfamiliar with this publisher, below are some of the titles that are relevant to occupational health and safety:

Safety Crimes by Steve Tombs and David Whyte

Workplace Violence by Vaughan Bowie, Bonnie Fisher and Cary L Cooper

Violence at Work by Martin Gill, Bonnie Fisher and Vaughan Bowie

There are many other titles concerning social issues which may be of relevance to some industrial sectors.

Kevin Jones

Note: SafetyAtWorkBlog occasionally receives review copies from Federation Press but with this special offer, a selection of books have been purchased.

Silly safety memes, knowledge dumps, body of knowledge and accreditation.

Kevin Jones’s piece on the HSE dilemma with odd reporting of OH&S issues (silly stuff like the popular media reporting HSE banning toothpicks) got me thinkin’ about how silly attitudes about OH&S requirements come about. And maybe there is something to learn from this when thinking about the OH&S body of knowledge and accreditation system.

Clearly the HSE has every reason to be disturbed by the tone that is developing about OH&S in the UK. A contemptuous tone has a knock-on effect that undermines confidence in OH&S generally.

But how does this come about in the first place? Are they spontaneous, or is it a case of one ill-considered bit of advice spreading as a meme?[1] And irrespective of the cause, why are these silly safety memes embraced so readily?

Is it because there are enough people more than happy to join in on denigrating OH&S because they simply have had enough of overly complex or unrealistic obligations? Or maybe the average punter has tired of high-sounding OH&S objectives that don’t turn real in a way that matters to them? Continue reading “Silly safety memes, knowledge dumps, body of knowledge and accreditation.”

Lord Young OHS review welcomed by UK’s HSE

The latest podcast by the Health & Safety Executive includes an interesting interview with the chair of the HSE, Judith Hackitt.

Hackitt admits that any review of occupational health and safety needed

“someone who could look beyond the remit of the Health and Safety Executive and look at what the other factors are out there that create the problems that we all know only too well that create all the nonsense and the myths.”

Lord Young certainly looks at other factors such as over-enthusiastic legal firms but it is hard to not think that someone other than Lord Young could have undertaken the review and come out with a more constructive plan of attack. In many ways his report confirms the misperceptions of OHS. Lord Young says, in his report:

“…the standing of health and safety in the eyes of the public has never been lower, and there is a growing fear among business owners of having to pay out for even the most unreasonable claims. Press articles recounting stories where health and safety rules have been applied in the most absurd manner, or disproportionate compensation claims have been awarded for trivial reasons, are a daily feature of our newspapers.”

This says more about the UK media than it does about the OHS laws themselves. Lord young is very light on his recommendations to curb or counter the inaccurate reporting by the media. He recommends combining food safety and OHS:

“Promote usage of the scheme by consumers by harnessing the power and influence of local and national media.”

He should have gone further but that would require looking at issues such as accuracy in reporting and the UK media is notorious for beat-ups and entrapment. UK newspapers feed on the “Yes Minister” absurdities of bureaucracy and when health and safety relates to children, in particular, they go all out. Continue reading “Lord Young OHS review welcomed by UK’s HSE”

Australian OHS expert in advisory role on Gulf oil spill

Australian Professor Andrew Hopkins is currently in the United States advising the Chemical Safety Board in its investigation of the Gulf of Mexico oil spill.

Several months ago it was rumoured that Hopkins would be part of the Commission of Inquiry, a rumour quickly denied by Hopkins and others.

According to a media release from FutureMedia, Hopkins will

“…spend several months working at the Board’s office in Denver as well as interviewing company managers in both the US and in London, where BP is headquartered.”

Hopkins has been interviewed by many media outlets in relation to the Gulf Oil Spill and BP’s safety culture due to his investigation of the Texas Oil Refinery explosion at a BP facility in 2005. Continue reading “Australian OHS expert in advisory role on Gulf oil spill”

Computer simulations of quad bike risks do not reflect reality

Guest contributor David Robertson discusses the differences between risk simulations and real risk data in relation to quad bike safety:

“The motion picture blockbuster “Avatar”, for the time we are in the cinema, would have us believe that Sam Worthington can turn into a giant blue man on a faraway planet. James Cameron used computers to deliver us this illusion. In science (and particularly with safety) we must be able to distinguish between computers that are valuable tools and computers that don’t represent reality. Dynamic Research, Inc.(DRI) chose 113 actual quad bike (ATV) accidents to simulate in a computer model.

The first table below shows the injuries DRI record as what really happened from all the 113 cases, but represented as approximate normalized injury cost (ANIC)*. When DRI’s computer runs the same cases, one would expect a similar result. The results are shown in the second table (ANIC), note the scale on the left has had to be changed (table 2 should be about 10 times taller if the same scale in table 1 was used) because head injuries rose from 360 points to well over 3000. Equally astonishingly is that abdomen injuries have vanished altogether and chest injuries dropped from 266 to a next to nothing (23). Asphyxiation was not even included in the computer model. Continue reading “Computer simulations of quad bike risks do not reflect reality”

Major rethink on Australian Standards needed

A recent download of a “free” guide from the Victorian Building Commission on retrofitting a home for bushfire protection raised the ongoing nonsense of Australian Standards costs. Sure enough, this free guide is only notionally so; if you don’t hand over $100 then the guide has limited use.

The guide I got, “A guide to retrofit your home for better protection from a bushfire”, is packed with useful info, up to the point you need the nitty-gritty. Time and time again the reader is sent off to AS 3959 – Construction of buildings in bush-fire prone areas. Being in OH&S-World we get used to that little double-blind. Happens all the time with regs and codes and all sorts of guidance stuff. And it is ridiculous. Its gotta change.

As best as I know a massive cost of development of Australian Standards is born by the participating development organizations. They are the ones that foot the salary bill to have their staff go off to meetings to formulate the Standards. Sure, there is going to be lots of other costs, but from what I can see this critical contribution to the development of Australian Standards is a cost to the businesses and government agencies taking part (ultimately a community cost) and the double whammy comes when you want to buy a Standard.

The fact that such an important bit of guidance on protecting homes from bushfire is essentially diminished by the need to spend $100 to get the Standard really slams home the point that change has to happen.

For mine, all PDF downloads of Australian Standards should be free. A cost recovery cost for a hard copy seems fair enough. I don’t know about the experience of others, but it borders on embarrassing to be giving a punter help on this or that OH&S issue and then have to add “Oh and I think you have no choice but to fork out $XXX for this Standard.” I hate that, and where I can I avoid it. But clearly there’s times when it’s impossible.

Perhaps it’s time to get fair dinkum about improved standards of safety, and fair dinkum in way that truly cuts the bullshit? And that means nationally developed Standards become the nation’s product; PDF copies free to anyone who needs to use ‘em.

Col Finnie
col@finiohs.com

Category: risk

Lessons Learnt…?

I would like to pose a question, or questions: are OHS professionals and the community in general, in all honesty, learning and applying the lessons we are being taught from workplace events?

Like this:

Half price psychosocial hazard books

Like this:

Silly safety memes, knowledge dumps, body of knowledge and accreditation.

Like this:

Lord Young OHS review welcomed by UK’s HSE

Like this:

Australian OHS expert in advisory role on Gulf oil spill

Like this:

Computer simulations of quad bike risks do not reflect reality

Like this:

Major rethink on Australian Standards needed

Like this:

I would like to pose a question, or questions: are OHS professionals and the community in general, in all honesty, learning and applying the lessons we are being taught from workplace events?

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this: