There is one word that should not be used as an adjective in relation to workplace fatalities – impacted. Workers fall from roofs and the concrete floor has an impact on them. Workers hit by mobile plant or crushed in machines die from the impact. An impact results from the transfer of energy and this … Continue reading “A shaky start leads to a terrific book on incident investigation by Michael Tooma”
In recent weeks on several LinkedIn discussion forums there has been a series of highly critical postings about the Safety Institute of Australia. (I have participated in some of the discussions.) Many comments have been unfair but almost all decry the absence of clear communication from the SIA and the very low profile of the organisation within Australia. The SIA has struggled … Continue reading “The Safety Institute’s low profile needs to be seen in a media context”
The most successful safety management improvements come from a multi-disciplinary approach. The biggest leaps in safety management have come not from the established safety academic profession of engineering but from those outside that discipline – sociologists (Andrew Hopkins) , psychologists (James Reason) and, increasingly, philosophers. Recently philosopher Alain de Botton was interviewed in the Australian magazine, … Continue reading “Where are the safety profession thinkers?”
The April 2012 edition of the UK magazine Training Journal makes a statement that is so simple, safety professionals should be kicking themselves. The safety profession is trying to change the measurement of safety from lag indicators to lead, from negatives to positives, from failures to successes and yet we continue to talk about zero harm. In Training Journal, … Continue reading ““Do some good” sounds more effective than achieving “zero harm””
Tooma is a leading figure in Australia’s analysis and application of occupational health and safety (OHS) laws. He has also been a regular author for publisher CCH. His latest book on workplace health and safety is entitled “Due Diligence: Duty of Officers”. The process for harmonisation of OHS laws in Australia continues to be a … Continue reading “New Tooma OHS book augurs well for the rest of the series on due diligence”
Tom von Aschwege has provided SafetyAtWorkBlog with a long article that was intended as a comment on recent articles concerning the safety culture of BP. The comment deserved to be an article in order to provide more prominence to von Aschwege’s views. Links, where appropriate, have been added and format has been tweaked. “I came by Ross … Continue reading “BP, safety culture and integrity management”
SafetyAtWorkBlog would not purport to be knowledgeable about airlines, Turkish or Australia but there was a fascinating article published in Europe on 12 March 2009 that discusses the safety culture in Turkish Airlines. The article is entitled “Islam and the art of aircraft maintenance” by Claire Berlinski