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Highlights • Provides a method to systematically investigate accidents in relation to analyzing elements of the SMS. • A socio-technical approach is adopted. • A graphical representation of the method is given. Abstract The concept of a safety management system (SMS) to control the risks of operational activities has been introduced in high-risk industries already some decades ago. SMS requires accidents/incidents to be reported and analysed and measures to be taken to prevent future events. Additionally, national investigating bodies have been given the role of independently investigating serious events, with the same goal. The current practice in accident and incident investigation however, does not provide a systematic approach to analyse elements of SMS. As a direct consequence, the opportunity to use these investigations for introducing sustainable system changes is often missed. The paper describes the SAfety FRactal ANalysis (SAFRAN) method that is developed to guide investigators to explore the composing elements of an SMS in a natural and logic way, starting from the findings close to operations that explain the occurrence – being the elements accident investigators are first confronted with. The paper further informs on the application of the SAFRAN method to review a selected set of published railway accident investigations, all reporting on occurrences related to over-speeding, possibly resulting in a (lethal) derailment. The depth and focus of the performed investigations is assessed and compared with a reference mode of expected findings that would result from an analysis that is applying the SAFRAN logic. This demonstrates the need, in order to introduce sustainable changes, to focus accident analysis on an organisation's capability of managing the variability that might put successful process performance at risk. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Construction is one of the most dangerous industries due to its unique, dynamic, and temporary nature. This paper aims to review and extract the factors influencing safety performance on construction projects. In the presented work, methodologies, results, discussions and findings from a total of 90 previous papers are investigated to achieve the paper objectives. The reviewed papers are categorized based on their type, methods of data collection, analytical method, research objectives, key findings and contributions, limitations, year, and the country of origin. A qualitative content analysis procedure is used to extract variables and factors. Furthermore, a hierarchical framework is developed to illustrate how the extracted factors influence safety on construction projects. The proposed framework is validated by using interviews with experts. The hierarchical framework explicitly confirms that safety performance not only is determined by management activities within project levels, but also by the interactions among factors at different hierarchical levels. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Safety climate has the potential to affect construction safety performance. The current focus of construction safety climate research has been on management commitment, safety rules and procedures, housekeeping and safety equipment, supervisor and coworker safety perception. However, other aspects, such as reporting and preparedness, that are also critical to safety performance, are rarely measured. In the meantime, safety plateau in the construction industry has been observed in many countries; and there are less and less injury data, which has made safety performance prediction more and more difficult. All of this has necessitated us looking for a new approach. Resilience, that is a concept under development, has shown its ability to continuously improve safety performance. Thus, to enhance the existing safety climate model, this paper developed a concept called Safety Climate Resilience (SC R ) by introducing resilience to safety climate. SC R is measured by seven dimensions including management commitment, supervisor safety perception, coworker safety perception, learning, reporting, anticipation, and awareness. Based on 431 self-administered surveys from 68 construction sites in Ontario, Canada, SC R measure model was validated and the interactions of the seven factors of SC R model were also investigated. This paper leads to several conclusions. First, a resilience safety climate model was built and firstly applied to the construction industry. Second, commitment from all organizational levels, from top management, to site level, and to individual level, is the key to promoting a better safety performance. Third, safety awareness is the most important individual factor affecting the safety performance of construction workers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The first target of the European Union’s safety policy is to improve the implementation of Occupational Health and Safety Management Systems, especially for small and medium enterprises (SMEs). Safety investments are un-competitive if compared to other investments, especially for SMEs, due to responsibility attribution management that does not guarantee the exemption of responsibility in the case of unpredictable accidents and to an insufficient incentive policy for enterprises, virtuous in safety investments. For SMEs safety investments are un-profitable also because the individual SME has no real perception of accident risks due both to difficulties in assessing and monitoring the real risk and to the small number of employees. The authors have introduced an index (Efficacy Index) to objectively quantify the effective implementation of an Occupational Health and Safety Management System (OHSMS). The paper shows how the index can be practically applied to a company and what kind of information can be collected and processed to determine the effective implementation of the OHSMS. The paper also aims to define a procedure to demonstrate the exemption of responsibility of a company in the case of an unpredictable accident and to allow further reduction of assurance premiums. In fact, only the exemption of responsibility for employers through effective implementation of the OHSMS, together with an adequate incentive policy, can significantly improve occupational health and safety. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

When a pressure pipeline accident occurs in the vicinity of people, it may cause a large number of injuries and deaths. Risk management has become one of the most effective means of preventing pressure pipeline accidents. However, there are no clearly proposed pipeline risk acceptance criteria in China. To improve the level of safety supervision and strengthen the decision-making ability of enterprises and governments at all levels, this paper attempted to establish societal risk acceptance criteria for pressure pipelines in China. FN-curves were used as the indicator of societal risk. A large amount of historical accident data was analyzed via linear regression. Then, the role of interval estimation derived from the regression equation was utilized in combination with the ALARP principle to form the acceptable criteria for societal risk. Graphical results were disclosed and showed that the upper limits of tolerable risk and broadly acceptable risk respectively started from about 10 −4.6 /a and 10 −5.3 /a and declined with a slope of 1.47. The approach was reasonable in that it accurately reflected the characteristics and rules of pressure pipeline accidents in China. Simultaneously, to ensure stability and continuous improvement, the use and applicability of societal risk acceptance criteria were discussed from both dynamic and regional factors based on the Chinese environment for making related suggestions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Safety Performance Indicators (SPIs) have found a wide use in safety management specially in Nuclear Power Plants (NPPs). The use of such a system in decision making vary from industry to industry depending on the objectives and scope. In this paper we will limit ourselves to NPPs. Furthermore the objective of the SPIs will be limited to safety management. One issue in using the SPIs is to determine the weightage of each SPI. The paper attempts to discuss this issue and provides guidelines to obtain weighting factors (WF) for the SPIs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Road traffic injury is the leading cause of work-related death and serious injury in Australia. Despite this, limited attention has been given to the development and implementation of effective preventive strategies within the workplace setting. A safe driving environment at work not only depends on individual compliance with safe driving practices but on all individuals understanding risks, anticipating threats to safety, showing concern for the safety of others, and contributing to safety improvements in the organisation. In particular, workgroup supervisors play a pivotal role in creating a safe work environment. This paper describes a new and innovative conceptual framework for a program designed to improve work-related driver safety. The focus of this program is on developing the skills of supervisors in identifying situations in which their drivers may be at risk on the road (e.g., drivers are tired, stressed, under pressure to meet deadlines) and to managing these situations through effective safety leadership. This paper describes development of the Safety Management for the Occupational Driver (SMOD) program and an implementation case study. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is a strong political consensus in a number of countries that occupational safety and health regulation is stifling industrial innovation and development and is feeding a culture of damaging risk aversion and petty bureaucracy. In a number of countries this has led to proposals to repeal regulations and reduce the regulatory burden. The authors were commissioned to prepare a discussion paper on this issue by the Mercatus Center of George Mason University in Arlington, Virginia, aimed particularly at an American audience. This paper is based on that report (Hale et al., 2011). The paper is based on previous work of the first two authors, developing a framework of occupational safety rule management at the workplace level (Hale and Borys, 2012a,b). Based on a literature study, this paper analyses the similarities and differences between rules at the workplace level and the development, use and enforcement of regulations at the national level to influence and control organisational behavior. It traces the forces encouraging the growth of regulatory detail and hence the bureaucratic burden of compliance and the options open to reduce that burden without loosening control so much that the level of safety declines. The analysis uses the hierarchy of rules from goals, through process (risk management) rules to detailed action rules as framework for predicting the level of ownership and responsibility felt by the regulated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Part 1, the companion paper to this paper (Hale and Borys, this issue) reviews the literature from 1986 on the management of those safety rules and procedures which relate to the workplace level in organisations. It contrasts two different paradigms of how work rules and their development and use are perceived and managed. The first is a top-down classical, rational approach in which rules are seen as static, comprehensive limits of freedom of choice, imposed on operators at the sharp end and violations are seen as negative behaviour to be suppressed. The second is a bottom-up constructivist view of rules as dynamic, local, situated constructions of operators as experts, where competence is seen to a great extent as the ability to adapt rules to the diversity of reality. That paper explores the research underlying and illustrating these two paradigms. In this second paper we draw on that literature study to propose a framework of rule management which attempts to draw the lessons from both paradigms. It places the monitoring and adaptation of rules central to its management process and emphasises the need for participation of the intended rule followers in the processes of rule-making, but more importantly in keeping those rules alive and up to date in a process of regular and explicit dialogue with first-line supervision, and through them with the technical, safety and legal experts on the system functioning. The framework is proposed for testing in the field as a benchmark for good practice. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: The paper reviews the literature from 1986 on the management of those safety rules and procedures which relate to the workplace level in organisations. It contrasts two different paradigms of how rules and their development and use are perceived and managed. The first is a top-down classical, rational approach in which rules are seen as static, comprehensive limits of freedom of choice, imposed on operators at the sharp end and violations are seen as negative behaviour to be suppressed. The second is a bottom-up constructivist view of rules as dynamic, local, situated constructions of operators as experts, where competence is seen to a great extent as the ability to adapt rules to the diversity of reality. The paper explores the research underlying and illustrating these two paradigms, drawn from psychology, sociology and ethnography, organisational studies and behavioural economics. In a separate paper following on from this review (Hale and Borys, this issue) the authors propose a framework of rule management which attempts to draw the lessons from both paradigms. It places the monitoring and adaptation of rules central to its management process. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Adopting the principle that it is better to self-regulate than to be regulated; voluntary accreditation schemes have been introduced by a range of high-hazard industries to lift safety and environmental performance. Both industries and regulators need to know if such programmes are effective. This paper presents a comparative case study of safety and environmental performance for a voluntary industry-led accreditation programme (Aircare) in the New Zealand agricultural aviation sector. The study hypotheses relate to rates of reported: • Accidents • Incursions and other incidents • Discharge and low flying occurrences • Equipment defects While there were observed differences in rates for the above occurrence types between accredited, transitional and non-accredited operators, none of these was found to be statistically significant, therefore the null hypotheses could not be rejected. An additional sensitivity test was undertaken in which all examined occurrences were combined into one variable “all events”. Non-accredited operators had a higher rate of these combined occurrences (risk ratio 1.32) and this finding was significant at a 90%, one-tailed, level of confidence. The additional test suggests that statistically significant results may emerge as more data becomes available. This finding indicates that participation in robust voluntary safety and environmental programmes may be associated with lead indicators of safer operations and fewer environmental incidents. Participation in such programmes may therefore convey important information on likely future safety and environmental performance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The hazard identification is one of the most significant issues of the safety management process. Conventional approaches to hazard identification in a job safety analysis (JSA) tend to failure of identifying all the potential hazards involved in a work and can lead to accidents. How to identify the hazards thoroughly has becoming a challenge. The energy source based job safety analysis (ESBJSA) method proposed in this paper, aimed to identify and assess all the potential hazards effectively by applying an analysis basis on energy sources. Through clarifying the energy sources in each sub step and identifying the corresponding potential hazards of each energy source respectively, the measures and solutions to eliminate or reduce the risks can be determined. The ESBJSA method was applied in an offshore construction and installation project, and the total recordable incident rate (TRIR) result was reduced 50% when compared with another similar project using conventional JSA method. Additionally, ESBJSA is a technique that can be fully applicable to many high risk construction and installation projects in shipyard. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: It is widely accepted that unsafe behaviour is intrinsically linked to workplace accidents. A positive correlation exists between workers’ safe behaviour and safety climate on construction sites. Construction workers’ attitude towards safety is influenced by their perception of risk, management, safety rules and procedures. Pakistan, a developing country, is currently experiencing a strong growth in its construction activities. Unfortunately, the enforcement of safety regulations in Pakistan is not widespread. Indeed, some relevant regulations are both outdated and irrelevant to daily construction operations. This paper investigates local construction workers’ behaviour, perception and attitude toward safety, and attempts to link the research findings to the influence of national culture. A three-part interview-based questionnaire survey has identified that the majority of workers have a good degree of risk awareness and self-rated competence. Additionally, workers’ intentional behaviour was empirically explained by their attitudes towards their own and management’s safety responsibilities, as well as their perception of the risk they are generally exposed to in their workplace. The paper also reveals that workers operating in a more collective and higher uncertainty avoidance environment, are more likely to have safety awareness and beliefs, which can exhibit safer on-site behaviour. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Exposure assessment is a strategy for anticipating, recognizing and evaluating employee exposures to physical, chemical, biological and ergonomic stresses at the workplace, so that effective and “sensible” controls can be put in place to mitigate the risk of occupational injury or occupational illness to the worker. It has been unveiled by this paper that this process is not applied adequately in Ghana and hence, hazards are not properly identified at workplaces. This leads to misapplication of controls or application of inadequate controls which tend not to reduce the risks at workplace. This outlines the various applicable exposure assessment strategies and also recommend controls and conditions that will make the process work in Ghana. It was outlined also that the process starts with the basic characterization which included area characterization, agent characterization and workforce characterization. This helps the industrial safety professional to understand the Similar Exposure Groupings (SEG’s) and their corresponding exposure profiles. This makes use of the basic statistics of the sample sizes of the SEG’s which get projected to the populations with 95% confidence interval so as to finalize tolerable risks. The modern engineer, the medic, and all relevant professionals must be conversant with this process and hence apply it at the workplace to ensure prevention of adverse exposures to employees, as well as prevention of accidents at the workplace. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper describes an experimental study of workers’ responses to proximity warnings of static safety hazards on construction sites using a location-based proximity warning system named the Proactive Construction Management System (PCMS). A method of evaluating workers’ responses to proximity warnings is proposed. The method consists of six variables: warning time and distance (the time and the minimum distance to a hazard when a worker receives a warning), dangerous time and distance (the time and the minimum distance to the hazard when the worker comes close to the hazard), and response time and distance (the difference between dangerous time and warning time, and the difference between dangerous distance and warning distance). Finally, whether a worker responds to a warning is evaluated against a two-second threshold and a two-meter threshold in terms of response time and distance respectively. The experiment was conducted over 17 workdays with the participation of 72 workers and resulted in 5391 warnings on a real-life construction project in Shanghai, China. The workers’ responses were analyzed with respect to two factors: building trades and a-priori risk levels. The research found that workers responded to proximity warnings actively, but slightly differently across the selected building trades; carpenters had longer response latency in hazardous areas than ironworkers did, and response percentages were high for hazardous areas with high risks. The results also show evidence that PCMS has the potential to improve workers’ safety performance. The limitations of the present study and future research directions are also addressed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Some states have knowledgeable and competent regulators. Others are less fortunate. The operation and management of safety industries depends upon individuals who are often poorly paid compared to their colleagues in the private sector. In consequence, some regulators lack the experience, motivation and insight needed to guide safety–critical industries. Further problems are created by the increasing use of performance-based regulation. Many countries rely on teams who are specialists in the management of regulatory processes rather than the detailed engineering of complex systems. We argue that these problems have been exacerbated by the recent financial crisis in Europe and North America. Governments have been forced to make additional cuts on spending as their fiscal revenues have declined. This has further limited the scope for regulatory intervention and many of the best engineers have now left state employment. This paper describes the crisis that arises when companies cannot obtain guidance from national agencies. Resource limitations have increased regulatory lag; companies are often unsure of the legal frameworks that apply to new generations of safety–critical industries, ranging from hydraulic fracturing (‘fracking’) to the regulation of commercial space operations. In other areas, the decline in regulatory resources has only been corrected in the aftermath of major accidents, such as Fukushima Dai-ichi and Montara. We conclude that competency criteria are urgently needed to ensure regulators have the technical background necessary to protect safety across a range of different industries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]