Public safety, as well as the safety of products and services, is of paramount importance and interest to individuals, organisations and society. Safety successes are achieved every second, but we take them for granted and we do not appreciate the challenges professionals meet to make the world as safe as possible. Safety failures are less frequent but become focal points of stakeholders and the public with a tendency to blame and not comprehend the context and the hard decisions professionals have to make when balancing safety with competing goals.
This edited book includes case studies from industry practitioners exactly as they experience them without relying on the understanding of researchers who conduct studies and try to map the overall situation per case based on multiple interviews, observations and questionnaires. Included are case studies from the aviation, construction, oil and gas, telecommunications, transportation, health and public safety industries. They are stories told by frontline practitioners who work to keep the public safe.
In each chapter, the author, based on his/her professional experience, shares two real cases, one "success" and one "failure", explaining the background and approach, and critically reflecting why his/her initiatives and activities worked or didn’t work. They are descriptive of the case, context and tools, techniques, methods and approaches followed and include the valuable safety lesson learned. This book is a forum for professionals to express and share with others their knowledge and experience usually found implicitly or hidden under formal and informal practices.
Preface
Editors
Contributors
Chapter 1 : System Knowledge : Most of the Times Adequate but Sometimes Insufficient
Chapter 2 : Safety Interventions : How Can We Make Them Worth the Effort?
Chapter 3 : Only a Few Seconds to Change the Course of an Event
Chapter 4 : How Could the Use of Technology Support Safety Management Programmes?
Chapter 5 : How to Eat an Elephant : Implementing Organisational Culture Change
Chapter 6 : Is Safety Part of Your Business Model? Turning a ‘Simple-to-Fix’ Safety Incident into an Opportunity for Everyone
Chapter 7 : The Development of Mental Health Proxy Teams and a Relationship That Threatened the Quality of a Safety Investigation
Chapter 8 : Passenger Experience and Safety Systems
Chapter 9 : Safety Numbers and Safety Differently
Chapter 10 : Infrastructure Projects as Complex Socio-Technical Systems
Chapter 11 : The Two Sides of the Same Coin
Chapter 12 : Learning from Incidents : Mind the Whole Set of Dimensions
Chapter 13 : Necessary Incompliance and Safety-Threatening Collegiality
Chapter 14 : Are the Stakeholders on Your Side or Not?
Chapter 15 : Making Safety a Priority
Chapter 16 : The Practical Value of Ensuring Effective Interfaces and Workforce Engagement
Chapter 17 : Just When You Thought You’d Done Enough
Index
