Skip to main content

TAKE THAT RESONSIBILITY FOR SFETY OR NO ONE ELSE MIGHT!


Personal Responsibility
Responsibility is not just a word. It isn’t supposed to be but in workplaces around the globe, quite a number of people don’t seem to want to know any different. Or how do you explain the recurrence of avoidable errors in most industrial premises, factories, construction and other work sites?
 Little things
It is the little things that people overlook which account for the greater losses at the end of the day. Oftentimes, we expect that the ‘BIG’ problems are it, and we expect they are meant for someone else further up the line to take care of. We forget to reckon with the fact that put together, the everyday routine, ‘insignificant’ errors and violations are by far heavier in reach and impact than that one big bang’ of an occurrence which may never happen. These so-called insignificant events are responsible for most of business losses even though most business owners may not know it because they, more often than not, are looking in the wrong places for the cause or causes of their woes.
Top events
Top events like huge infernos in high-rise buildings, petroleum storage tank and pipeline fires/explosions, and other cataclysmal occurrences are usually few and far between but are also a further manifestation of the fact seemingly insignificant operational errors, non-compliance and other oversights are steadily allowed to become an acceptable part of ‘normal routine’ by management. Risk management tools and techniques like facility technical audits, hazard and operability studies (HAZOPs), process safety audits (PSAs) and so on, which are designed to address major business safety issues and concerns have their place but nothing beats looking to fix the constant drip, drip losses of the everyday workplace.
Small fries
Small fries they may be but they, together, pack a devastating cumulative knockout punch for your bottom line. And stopping them from occurring is such an elusive task because they are seen as not such a big deal after all. I mean, what’s dropping the greasing can so long as you can clean up the spot later? C’mon guys don’t be so picky! Or is this place no longer a repair shop?
Unfortunately that’s where the slip lies.
Correctly interpret own roles and responsibility
If we were all to be at home with the import of personal responsibility, then controlling or preventing these insignificant but loss-laden events should have been a piece of cake. If only every person in the workplace were able to interpret or decode their assigned roles and responsibilities correctly, life would be a lot easier all round. It should have been easy for us to figure out what the system expects of us whether it is to do with incident reporting, organising workplace communication, and evaluating hazards before, during and/or after the work.
It should have been easy for us to determine that taking control and curtailing the everyday minor occurrences will culminate in controlling the major and often, earth-quaking events and occurrences. If we picture negative occurrences like a triangle, the picture ought to be clearer. Put the top events at the apex, the not so serious in the middle with the minor ones at the base, then it comes out clearly that if we were to succeed in sorting out the base, the apex will pose no problem as it will eventually disappear. 

 

 



 
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

THAT 5-MINUTE PEP TALK BEFORE THE JOB

There are pep talks and there are pep talks. Over the years, I've had the privilege of observing pep talks all day long on seismic crews, construction sites, production platforms, processing plants, wire line, drilling operations, rig moves and so on. But not once have I left not feeling maybe the crew could have done better with the shape and content of the core messages thereof. This is because I am of the view that safety messages are only helpful if they are clear and to the point, with little or no ambiguity, if any at all. Unfortunately, this is not always the case. Now 5-minutes is not a great deal of time for even the most gifted and skillful of speakers to nail  home  the key safety dos and don'ts of the job soon to commence. So most of these talks frequently average out to be sing songs and prayerful affairs in the end, with generalized 'messages' like be 'your brother's keeper', 'safety is everybody's business', 'you all know ...
Post a Comment
Read more

HOW MUCH DOES A NEAR MISS INCIDENT COST?

In 'ACCIDENT IS MONEY DOWN THE DRAIN', we tried illustrating  how a NOTHING HAPPENED near miss incident of a hammer accidentally slipping off a technician's grasp, falling through a considerable height and landing safely between two busy foremen, with no damage to property or injury to anyone on site resulted in so much useful production time loss. A conservative computation of the time-cost estimate showed what seemed to be a 'harmless' incident costing the site company management a hefty 3.4 Man-Days lost time in direct costs! The exercise ended without considering the 'POTENTIAL' of the occurrence. 'POTENTIAL' simply refers to the probability of a much more consequential outcome by chance or slightly altered circumstances given the number of people exposed to the threat at the time. This is usually what constitutes the difference between a 'NOTHING HAPPENED' incident, a disabling/ serious property damage one or a fatality . That th...
Post a Comment
Read more

How Much of Your Opex Do You Save Cutting Corners?

What % of your operating budget do you save when you look the other way while unauthorized changes and deviations are a norm in the workplace under your supervision? Would you 5, 10, 15 or maybe 30%? You are not too sure how much, if anything at all? Well, it is highly unlikely that you will ever save on your Opex if employees are free to make up their own rules as they go along or can decide which step on the job comes next instead of what the approved procedures say. In fact working with scant regards for the Right Way of doing things condemns you to an ever spiraling  operating budget spend. Because you'll find that you are constantly grappling with 'digging a hole to fill a hole' throughout the life of  the project. In the end, there are no prizes for guessing that your project will come in grossly over budget and way outside the delivery schedule because of all the issues of rework, unplanned stoppages, delayed logistics, repairs and replace...
Post a Comment
Read more