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What Should You Look for to Prevent Major Accidents? People often ask me, “What are accident indicators?” What should they look for when performing audits help to prevent major accidents? Of course, there are variations in the answers to these questions depending on the industry. However, I thought about performing audits for SIF (Significant Injury […]
Continue Reading SIF/Process Safety Accident Indicators
The Nuclear Navy was the First High-Reliability Organization On February 20, 1949, Admiral Rickover reported for duty as the head of the Division of Reactors Development at the Atomic Energy Commission and to the Chief of the Bureau of Ships for “additional duty.” This was the start of the Nuclear Navy – the first high-reliability […]
Continue Reading What Was the First High-Reliability Organization?
Misconceptions? People write about their high-reliability organization research. This often makes me chuckle because I’ve worked in a high-reliability organization, and what the researchers “learn” isn’t always what is going on. First, let me say that my high-reliability organization experience was in Admiral Rickover’s Nuclear Navy. Seven years and two ships – the USS Arkansas […]
Continue Reading High-Reliability Organization Misconceptions
A concussion injury happened at an offsite location while an employee was collecting soil samples in an offsite forest late in the workday. To access the collection site, the employee who suffered a concussion had to cross over a roadside berm that happened to have a fallen tree on top of it. The employee thought […]
Continue Reading Concussion Prompts Reconsideration of Work Hazards, Contingencies (What does a bad day look like?)
What Can We Learn NOW? On June 14, 2010, I published this article and this question: How Long Must We Wait To Learn? I asked: “Do we need to wait for the completion of the Presidential Commission’s investigation to learn from the BP Deepwater Horizon Accident?” OK … I know that asking that question […]
Continue Reading REPOSTED: Lessons About Safety Culture from the Deepwater Horizon Accident
Modification to the EPA RMP The EPA has modified the EPA’s Risk Management Plan (RMP). To see the details of the modifications, CLICK HERE. The modifications to the regulation need to be implemented by May 10, 2027. New Root Cause Analysis Requirements Page 17654 of the regulation (at the link above) proposes a root cause […]
Continue Reading New EPA RMP Rules: 3 Years to Comply
Senior Management Needs to Read This Article This article is for senior corporate management… Can your investigators tell you that your baby is UGLY? What do I mean by this? Can your investigators point out management system flaws that ONLY YOU can fix? If you say yes … I want to know the last time […]
Continue Reading Senior Management: Can Your Investigators Tell You that Your BABY is UGLY?
Rickover – Normalization of Deviation / Normalization of Excellence This is the key to the series on preventing the “normalization of deviation” with the “normalization of excellence.” Read about Admiral Rickover’s successful efforts to establish the first high-reliability organization and how you can use the same philosophy to improve your process safety program. What is […]
Continue Reading Stopping the Normalization of Deviation with the Normalization of Excellence – How Admiral Rickover Did It
Think About Next Year’s Performance Improvement Initiatives Does your organization need to improve: Then, you should be thinking of your goals and initiatives for 2024. But where can you get new ideas to take your improvement initiatives to the next level? We will provide several suggestions below… Performance Improvement Success Stories Sometimes, you can get […]
Continue Reading Do You Need To Improve Performance?
What is a Non-Conservative Decision? Conservative Decision-Making (as opposed to non-conservative decision-making) was probably best defined in the Nuclear Navy. Admiral Rickover called it “Facing the Facts.” He said that Facing the Facts (Conservative Decision-Making) was: “To resist the human inclination to hope that things will work out, despite evidence or suspicions to the contrary.” […]
Continue Reading 2 Dead – Another Example of Non-Conservative Decision-Making at a Refinery