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Transcript

E35: Critical Steps for managing hazardous work (quickisode) · Safe As Podcast

• 0:06
  Welcome to the next quickest side of SAFE As.
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  How do you manage those few high risk or critical tasks that have
• 0:14
  to either go right or might involve thin margins from
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  mistakes? Well, critical steps and risk
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  important actions are human performance concepts used to
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  identify and manage the most significant risks in operations.
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  These concepts are discussed by Tony Machara ET al.
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  In their book Critical Steps, Managing What Must Go Right in
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  High Risk Operations. A critical step is defined as a
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  human action that, if performed improperly, will trigger
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  immediate, irreversible, and intolerable harm to an asset.
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  These actions typically involve A substantial transfer of
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  energy, movement of solids, liquids or gases, or the
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  transmission of data and information.
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  For something to be a critical step, the specific human action,
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  procedural step, for instance, must result in intolerable harm
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  if control is lost during that action.
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  Some examples of critical steps could be making an incision
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  during surgery, stepping into a confined space where the
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  atmosphere could be oxygen deficient, pulling the trigger
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  on a firearm, or administering a medication to a patient either
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  by swallowing or injection. Tony notes that critical steps
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  always involve an action verb that usually ends with ING, so
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  making or stepping. Consider these examples.
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  You can't uncut the patient after you make the incision, nor
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  can you put the bullet back in the barrel after pulling the
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  trigger. A risk important action is a
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  preceding human action that either create the conditions for
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  work and establish the conditions for safety, called
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  risk important conditions. The authors ask the rather
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  logical question of whether you need a parachute to skydive.
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  Their answer is only if you want to skydive twice.
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  The one critical step in skydiving is stepping outside of
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  the airborne plane. But there are lots of risk
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  important actions that set up a safe dive, like correctly
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  inspecting and packing the parachute, et cetera.
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  Hence, as Tony emphasises, it's important to emphasise the setup
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  is the creation of conditions before that supports safe and
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  successful performance of the critical step.
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  Unlike critical steps, these risk important actions are
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  always reversible and typically have some level of slack like a
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  time gap after they occur, allowing for recovery actions
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  before the harm in shoes. They establish the necessary
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  preconditions for a subsequent critical step.
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  So, examples of risk important actions as distinct from the
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  critical steps. Checking the correct location of
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  incision before incision. Checking the atmosphere of a
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  large tank before actually entering it for inspection.
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  Checking the six riots protocols before administering the
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  medication to a patient which is right patient, right drug, right
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  dose, right location, right time and right reason.
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  Securely donning a properly packed parachute before leaping
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  from an aeroplane. Again, the one and only critical
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  step for skydiving. So risk important action set the
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  stage for safe work, while critical steps are the points of
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  no return where a loss of control will lead to immediate
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  severe harm. So for what next?
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  All after becoming familiar with this approach, the authors
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  recommend you pinpoint the critical steps during the next
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  high risk task which they notice commonly conducted by the
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  particular work group familiar with the task.
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  Or even you could review a previous event and and identify
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  the 1-2 or few actions that quoting the book must go
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  absolutely right first time. I highly recommend reading this
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  book. I use these principles in my
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  daily safety work. Let me know how you go about
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  applying it in your work. And thanks to Tony to Breckley
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  for reviewing the script for this part and making it just
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  that bit better. That's it on this quick aside as
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  safe as Thanks everyone.