Safety and Accident Information

The home page showed the basic model for the accident investigation system. Some additional basic information is given on this page. You may want to look at resources for books etc. if you want additional references.

The definitions given on this page are examples. Within your organization, you will have to agree on your definitions which are vital to setting up your system to learn from accidents. The broader your definitions, the more opportunities to learn from what went wrong.

Safety - Definition

"Safety" today is far away from the traditional way when people related safety only or mainly to injury type events. So if there was no injury, it had little or nothing to do with safety. In 1966, Frank Bird wrote his book "Damage Control" to point out that material damage events could have resulted in injury under somewhat different circumstances and should therefore be part of "safety".  Thirty years later, in 1997, Frank Bird wrote the book "The Property Damage Accident - The Neglected Part of Safety" indicating that there still may be people out there going by the old - injury type related - definition of safety. Nevertheless, many of the techniques and principles that are widely used today in areas as quality and risk management originally came from the safety field.

Control

Control is the elimination, prevention and reduction of occurrence of events that (may) result in human, material, environmental or business loss. Control also includes the reduction/limitation of accident results through emergency pre-planning and actions and PEP (Post Event Planning).

Control is part of the management system described by Louis A. Allen: POLC - Planning, Leading, Organizing and Controlling. The "control" function is further defined by Bird: ISMEC and ties in with the domino model provided on the home page.

I - Identification of (management) activities

S - Standards set for execution of activities and results expected thereof

M - Measurement of implementation and results

E - Evaluation of implementation and results

C - Correction or extending of activities in case results are not being obtained

The "I" and the "S" are part of the first domino on "management system". The "M" and the "E" relate to periodic (internal) auditing as well as the evaluation of the effectiveness of the system by measuring such things as accidents, incidents, near-accidents (also called near-miss incidents),  inspection results, behavior observations, etc.  

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