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E58: Diving into a process of Safety Decluttering · Safe As Podcast

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  Today we're tackling a concept that resonates with anyone
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  managing complex systems. Safety clutter being the
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  features of safety activities that essentially waste time and
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  attention without actually improving safety.
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  Good, everyone. I'm Ben Hutchinson and This is
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  Safe as a thrifty analysis of safety and risk research.
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  Visit safetyinsights.org for more research.
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  Today's source is the decluttering safety report from
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  the Construction Safety Research Alliance 2025.
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  A key challenge here is that safety clutter is easy to add
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  and difficult to remove. The authors use a fridge as an
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  example. With every new shopping trip or
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  new safety mandate, where more is added but little effort goes
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  into cleaning or reorganising. Over time, good requirements get
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  buried and essentially spoiled requirements remain.
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  They propose the Safety Clutter classification model, which
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  divides waste into two main forms, conditional clutter and
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  pure clutter. Most clutter we encounter is
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  conditional clutter. This means the activity could be
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  valuable, but flaws in its design, execution, or timing
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  render it wasteful. When these attributes are
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  corrected, the same activity can shift from clutter to
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  evaluating. We look for three main families
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  here, starting with excessive clutter.
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  Ask yourself, is it unnecessarily complex, overdone
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  or repeated? This is where we find the
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  activities that are over complicated, like documents
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  crammed with fine print, footnotes, colour codes and
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  arrows. The countermeasure is that
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  activities should be simplified and streamlined.
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  Remove unnecessary steps, consolidate forms or screens,
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  use plain language and apply user centred design principles.
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  Or maybe it's overdone, requiring extraneous approvals
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  like a single work permit needing 4 signatures from
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  different departments even when only one has relevant oversight.
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  The countermeasure is activity should be reduced in frequency
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  and volume. Eliminate extraneous approvals.
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  Reduce unnecessary reporting, set thresholds for when reviewer
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  documentation is truly needed, and automate routine cheques
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  that add no insight. Next, watch out for irrelevant
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  clutter. The probing question here is
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  does it involve the wrong people, happen at the wrong time
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  or place, or produce information that no one uses?
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  A perfect example is misplaced content, like going back to the
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  fridge. Example, ice cream in the
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  crisper drawer or eggs in the freezer, or more relevantly, a
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  safety meeting held in the trailer far from the work area
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  or even by managers disconnected from the daily work.
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  The countermeasure is that activity should be relocated and
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  retimed to occur where and when they add the most value,
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  delivering them at the point of use, say on site or before key
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  decisions or within active workflows.
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  So ultimately information influences action.
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  Perhaps the worst here is a dead end where you submit hundreds of
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  near mis reports that no one reviews, discusses, or acts
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  upon. Anyone that's had to submit take
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  files and similar documents, not knowing how it's ever used and
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  collected and analysed, could probably relate to this.
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  The countermeasure is that activity should be linked to
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  consumption and feedback loops. Identify who uses the outputs
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  and how they inform decisions. Remove unused reporting streams
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  and automate summaries that trigger review, discussion and
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  corrective action. Then there's inaccessible
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  clutter. Safety info that's difficult to
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  obtain, have or use. Is your critical information
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  buried deep within systems with no search function?
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  The countermeasure is that activity should be corrected by
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  reorganising and servicing critical information, improve
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  indexing and search functions, apply consistent tagging and
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  categorization, or create dashboards or notifications that
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  direct users to the most relevant content where and when
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  they need it. Or is it noisy, As in, are our
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  information and documentation overloaded with irrelevant
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  fields, making it hard to focus on serious hazards?
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  The countermeasure is that activity should be decluttered
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  by prioritising high value content and removing
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  distractions. This involves limiting low
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  impact fields and check boxes and highlighting serious hazards
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  and ensuring that essential information stands out from the
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  background noise. So critically improve the
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  pathways, fixing the broken links and servicing important
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  information. Finally, we have pure clutter,
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  which is inherently wasteful and must be removed.
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  This is the invalid family which arises when the safety work
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  lacks a real underpinning foundation in logics, laws and
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  whatnot. This includes anything obsolete
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  which reflects legacy practises that persist out of habit even
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  after the context or technology or methods have moved on.
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  The countermeasures activities must be modernised and
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  refreshed. Specifically, this means
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  reviewing legacy practises regularly, retiring outdated
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  content and redesigning training and checklists and procedures et
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  cetera to reflect current work conditions and technologies and
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  importantly, risks. It also includes anything
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  incorrect based on quoting the report, disproven or otherwise
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  flawed assumptions. An example is using total
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  recordable injury rates to measure safety performance.
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  The countermeasure is activities must be eliminated or replaced
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  with evidence based practises. This involves discontinuing
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  efforts grounded in disproven assumptions like trifra
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  etcetera, used specifically as a proactive measure of seizure
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  performance, which it's really not, and replacing them with
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  validated predictive measures or soft Intel based on leveraging
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  human expertise and insights from systems thinking lenses.
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  That's it on safe. As I'm Ben Hutchinson, please
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  help share, rate and review, and check out safetyinsightsorg for
• 6:38
  more research. Finally, feel free to support
• 6:42
  Safe As by shouting a coffee link in the show notes.