Safety Management Systems - Discussion and two essays

Week 1

Defining the Safety Management System

Several years ago, during my short time as a football coach, I had the pleasure of meeting and listening to legendary coach, Eddie Robinson. He spoke about the importance of a system. Coach Robinson relayed the experience of being thrust into the helm at Grambling. He had been informed of how simple minded his athletes would be and the difficulty of running plays and defensive schemes. Well, if you watched Grambling State during the Robinson era, you would see anything but a simple offensive scheme. Instead you would see multiple formations, motions, audibles, and an attack that could change and adapt midstream. It was his system that enabled the team to understand and execute his plan. In other words, it learned from its experiences.

A safety system must have the same characteristics. It has to be able to adapt procedures and policies at a pace which allows it to manage the outcomes that are associated with the tasks of the organization. In order to accomplish this it must:

1. Collect relevant statistics and information (facts)

2. Organize and analyze the data (investigate)

3. Implement countermeasures

4. Monitor changes, and

5. Communicate with all the components.

A safety management system must be comprehensive in order to allow the organization to learn from its experience. The goal of a management system is to implement a chosen strategy by allocating resources at critical tasks (Kausek, 2007). A system is defined as a set of interacting or interdependent entities, real or abstract, that form a whole. The whole is the operating process that governs the core activities mentioned above.

The structure of the system is defined from its processes. It is further described as “open” or “closed.” A closed system operates by itself without interaction from other entities or inputs. “Open” describes a system which interacts with entities in an environment. Safety is an “open” system. It has many customers that have input to it and then it produces an output or service to the customer.

We can further describe systems as high functioning or low functioning. This refers to the exchange of information between the inputs and the system. In other words safety is an “open” and “highly functional” system. Safety continually exchanges feedback to its inputs in order to maintain close alignment. So, it collects data, analyzes it, adapts to it, coordinates change, and then resets to do it again.

A simple schematic of this exchange could be drawn in this manner.

In this basic schematic you can see that safety has closely aligned inputs. This drawing can be made better. Missing is the names of the customers and the services or outputs that safety produces to each.

A systematic approach encompasses all levels of an organization. The functions can be spread among each level or among its inputs, if so structured. This helps in implementing the change and directing its continuation. But the biggest advantage of a systems approach comes in the area of time management. Safety professionals can get caught up in crisis mode. This is a condition where the activities are overwhelmed by reactive investigations of incidents. Insufficient time for implementing countermeasures or proactive activities then leads to more reactive activities. This downward spiral becomes difficult to reverse. The systematic approach attempts to balance reactive and proactive activities in order to prevent a downward turn of safety.

The model of safety that we are exploring would like this:

Organization Structure Leadership

Resources Culture

The center represents our core activities. The headings viewed in this typical risk management model would comprise of a complete reporting system and of a self-assessment system for identifying the risks and hazards. The statistics kept for recordkeeping and the subsequent identification of cause with our investigations will allow us to analyze the risk or hazard. System safety analysis, Process Safety Management and all investigations produce countermeasures. Implementing the solution and then re-assessing the solution allows us to stay in touch with environment and adjust our policies, procedures, and training. Of course, all of these are influenced by the variables you see surrounding the core and additionally, the values and manner that the core activities are carried out will influence the variables.

If the entire schematic were surrounded with the system’s inputs or customers and the system’s outputs were identified this would be the complete schematic of safety as a whole system. This course will address you filling in the blanks that I have left for this model. By course end you should have an idea of the values and activities that you will display or perform in your safety system.

Completing the Schematic of Safety

The core duties of safety can be said to encompass identifying hazards, assessing the risk of the hazard, investigating the hazard or occurrence to produce a countermeasure, implement the change, or counter, and to assess the counter for effectiveness. These duties are impacted positively or negatively by the organization’s structure, leadership ability and style, resource allocation, and culture. These core duties and the variables that impact it are central in our vision of safety as a system. These produce the value services that safety provides to its customers, or inputs.

You will be tasked this week with identifying the various customers that provide input to safety. These customers surround the safety bubble of core duties and impacting variables. In other words, take the simple schematic from above with safety in the middle and unidentified inputs orbiting it, and replace safety with the schematic of core duties and variables.

The next step will be to identify the value propositions, or services that safety provides to these customers. Place the services or the top services beneath the relevant customer. You now have a solid picture that defines safety for the specific organization. This visual will go a long way in establishing meaning through symbolism. It provides a quick visual definition of safety to all members of the organization.

Management system standards divide the components or tools for the system we have pictured into three types of components. These components are:

1. Core processes, which produce the services in our system,

2. Supporting processes, which provide direct input to the core processes, or measure the results of the core processes, and

3. System supporting processes which protect the integrity of the system as a whole (Kausek, 2007).

We have already defined most of the core processes or duties of safety. The supporting processes include programs such as hazard recognition and reporting, or the tracking of measures for success for outputs, which are encompassed in the goals and objectives that safety and the organization have produced. System supporting processes include document control, program effectiveness audits, division of responsibilities, and system auditing.

As we progress through the course you will see where specific components fit into the overall system as core, supporting, or system supporting.