Does your safety observation system create victims, villains?

Does your safety observation system create victims, villains?: Chances are you have a behavior-based safety (BBS) process in place for all of your projects. And the reason you have that BBS process to begin with is to reduce accidents.

Good pragmatic article on BBS

BBS is not a panacea for everything. This article is a pragmatic view of the BBS process
Read it in this link

Another view of behaviour based safety programs

I have always maintained the view that behaviour based safety programs will succeed only if top managements behaviour is also observed and corrected. Read an interesting article from a unions perspective in this link. This article should be read by all top management.

Contribute to the surviving victims of Bhopal by buying my book "Practical Process Safety Management"

Behaviour Based Safety - Take it with a pinch of salt!

I am always of the view that if behavior based safety has to succeed, the behavior of top management should be corrected first. For example, in an organization if top management keep saying safety is important and do not support their actions with visible and cost committed actions, nothing will change. The Indian culture follows the rule "the boss is always right". So in most Indian organisations, it is something short of blasphemy to observe and report top managements behaviour!
When I was working as a Plant manager 25 years ago, the bosses right up to the top were always displaying the correct behaviour mainly because they were technocrats and had command over the other non technocrats in the organization. The United Steel Workers union in USA has a take on behavior based safety which is worth reading from this link. (large file...be patient).

 Do you have a BBS program going on in your facility? I would like to seek feedback from you about your experience.

 Contribute to the surviving victims of Bhopal by buying my book "Practical Process Safety Management"

Process Safety and the Union's view

I read an interesting article about Process Safety and behaviour based safety and the unions perspective on it.In India, behaviour based safety is being bandied about by many as the ultimate solutions to all problems. Organisations have to understand that not only is the worker's behaviour responsible, it is also the behaviour of the top management that is also responsible for process safety!

Read the full article by the Steelworkers  union in this link

Process Safety and Behaviour Based Safety

There's a lot of buzz to day in behavior based safety. My experience indicates that as far as any safety is concerned, the behavior of top management is what dictates the behavior of the entire workforce.If top management keeps on talking about cost cutting and not talking about safety, that's what they will get - cost cutting measures getting implemented without analyzing the effect of the change on process safety! The BP Texas refinery incident is an example of this. The behavior of top management towards process safety does not involve rocket science. However, presently, a dangerous trend is taking place in the Industry. The board of directors in many of the chemical facilities do not have a technical person. My problem is not with the board of directors but with the information that reaches them. The president and other members of the top management who report to the board sometimes do not clearly communicate the risks involved in the implementation of certain decisions.This is a recipe for disaster.
I'm happy that the Baker Panel report has recommended that a person with adequate process safety experience must be on the board to explain to top management the effects of certain decisions on process safety.