2015 AIChE Spring Meeting and 11th Global Congress on Process Safety
(154a) Are We Really Learning from Incidents? a Discussion of Best Practices and Common Mistakes
Author
I sent the safety alert last month, and another similar incident just happened!! Why don't we really learn from a safety incident?
Upon completion attendees will be able to:
- Understand the difference between learning and sharing incidents
- Understand ways to prioritize what gets shared Tips for communicating incidents
- What it takes to learn from incidents Overcoming asset owner pride Making it sustainable
Abstract: Typical issues encountered by organizations while implementing LFIs
- Trying to learn from everything vs. a focused, risk based prioritization approach
- Ambiguity to whom investigation outcomes and lessons learned are applicable:
- Encountering organizational barriers to learning (e.g., culture, structure, roles, etc.)
- Ineffective and/or inactive leadership drive and engagement
- Focus on compliance vs. commitment
- Misalignment of what is said vs. the what actually happens in the field (the ‘Say-Do’ gap)
- Overcomplicated and ineffective safety communication
- Inability to identify the true root causes
- Lack of systems to properly capture and disseminate lessons
- Lessons fail to result in revised documentation of standards and procedures for proper re-use
This session will focus on how to achieve the benefits of successful learning:
Reduce Risk - Lower overall organizational risk tolerance and incident rate
- Effective performance management systems and continuous improvement processes
- Active audit programs, identified safety barriers and robust safety-critical activities
- Prompt investigation of issues with focus on determining the true root cause
- Immediate, underlying and latent cause (s), including human/behavioral factors Committed Leadership & Organization
- Leaders demonstrate a commitment to safety and learning in their decisions and behaviors - Clearly defined basis from which to learn as well
as roles/accountabilities Impactful Knowledge Management
- Effective safety communication - Simple, memorable and visual communication - Effective systems for capturing, codifying, storing and retrieving