Ihab Saad – Theories of accident causation

Boots with steel toe, for example, and you ignore these instructions

that will result in an accident.

The third one is inappropriate activities. Examples include

performing tasks without the requisite training. Again, if

you're not trained, do not do it or misjudging the degree of risk

involved with a given task. And This especially happens to people

who have done this tasks. This that so many times in the past,

they would say, Well, I done this task 100 times in the past, it's

not going to happen to me. It happens to other people. So in

fact, this is a problem that happens to happens to people with

a high level of experience when they let their guards down and

they do not pay attention to the routine steps to be followed to

have a safe work environment. So this is the human factors theory.

Another theory is called the accident slash incident theory. So

the accident slash incident theory says that, again, some reasons

could be because of overload, pressure, fatigue. By the end of

the day, you're tired, motivation, you are motivated, if you do it in

a shorter time, or you if you achieve more, if you have a higher

productivity, you're going to be rewarded. So again, you try to

achieve more at the expense of safety, drugs alcohol or worry,

drugs and alcohol, definitely there's no tolerance, zero

tolerance of drugs and alcohol on construction sites because of the

direct correlation between these and accidents. So we try to avoid

them from the very first place. So all of these are one of the

reasons that cause accidents and incidents. Another one is

ergonomic traps, incompatible workstation tools. There are some

injuries that occur to certain vocational workers on site due to

a bad analysis of the operation itself, you're gonna carry

something, for example, you're gonna carry something heavy and

you're not carrying it properly, or you do not wear a belt or

something to support that weight. Or it should be carried by two

people. They try to carry it by itself. So this is an ergonomic

trap through incompatible workstation tools, even people who

are doing office jobs, you notice that if they type too much during

the day, they might be get the carpal tunnel syndrome, and they

might need surgery to fix that. So again, with the proper posture,

with the proper location of the different pieces of equipment you

can have, you can avoid these accidents, incompatible

expectations, again, the example that I just gave about something

to be carried by more than one person and one person only

stepping forward to carry it is going to result, usually, in an

injury.

The third one is a decision to air. Does anyone make a an

educated decision to err, to make a mistake? Not necessarily

educated decision, but it might, in some cases, be an intentional

decision to do something that's dangerous, thinking that I'm too

good for that accident to happen to me. I know better. I

experienced it. I've done it in the past, so the accident will not

happen to me, and that can result either from misjudgment of the

risk, by thinking that, Oh, I know how to deal with that risk,

unconscious decision to err. I'm hasty. I try to do it faster than

usual. Logical decision based on the situation. Actually, it should

be even an illogical decision, because if you applied logic and

if you thought sorry about it, you would say, No, I shouldn't do

that.

An example of the decision to err is to remove your safety harness

while working on a high platform. For example, what's going to

happen? In this case, you might be subject or you might subject to

falling and getting a severe injury.

All of these lead to human errors, going back to the human error

theory,

or system failure, another reason causing the accident incident

theory is the system failure, either the policy is defective,

the safety policy is defective, or responsibilities you are not

assigning the proper responsibility. You do not have a

competent person on site. You do not have a safety officer to

enforce all of these policies, training, lack of training. For

example, you introduce a new piece of equipment, and you ask your

employees, your labor to work with it immediately, without giving

them the proper training that usually results in accidents.

Inspection.

The fire extinguishers have to be inspected on a regular basis. You

did not inspect them properly. They were used previously without

refill or without replacement. So in this.

In accidents happening.

In the systems theory of causation, the root cause could be

a person, a machine, environment, any of these, the interaction

between these can cause a problem. So you need to collect information

to try to avoid this problem from happening. What would happen if we

operate this man lift close to power lines? Is this power line

activated or not? What if we use that scaffold and we move the

scaffold which has wheels while someone is standing on top of it

and so on. So collect information about what you can do and what you

can't do. Weigh risks again. There's no project without risks.

There's no activity that's risk free. All we're trying to do is

reduce the amount of risk and its likelihood and its impact as much

as possible, but we are never gonna have a risk free

environment. It's just a matter of knowing what the risks are,

calculating them and knowing how to deal with them. So waive the

risks, make decision based on the information that was collected and

based on that risk prioritization and its weight and its impact and

its probability of happening. And finally, define the task to be

performed, or design the task to be performed based on this

educated process.

Information to be collected includes job requirements, workers

abilities and limitations. So for example, if you are if you have

asthma, for example, you should not work in an environment that's

that where you might be subject to

toxic fumes or lack of oxygen or something like that. What would be

the gain if the task is successfully completed, and what

would be the loss if the task is attempted by fail, but fails loss

in human life or injuries or in property damage as well. And what

is the loss if the task is not attempted at all? So all of this

kind of information needs to be collected before designing the

task to be performed.

Finally, behavior theory, the BBs, there are seven basic principles

to the behavior based safety theory, use intervention that's

based on employee behavior. So you're going to monitor your

employees and see what are the pitfalls? What are the common

mistakes and failure your program to take care of these mistakes so

they don't have

identify external factors that aid in understanding and improving

employee behavior. So how can you motivate them? How can you

encourage them? How can you, in some cases, the carrot and the

sticks so. So in some cases, the carrot might work. In some other

cases, the stick might work, might work

direct behavior with activators or events antecedent or prior to the

desired behavior, and motivate employees to behave as desired

with incentives and rewards that follow the desired behavior. So

we're gonna say, for example, we're gonna have a meeting, safety

meeting on site. We need to finish this project with zero accidents,

so everyone is going to be paying attention to that. We want to have

a an accident free site,

and if we managed to do the so. So this is the antecedent to the

action. And then you would say, if we manage to have a an accident,

free project, every employee is going to get a reward of such and

such type, whether it's going to be free days, whether it's going

to be extra payment, whether it's going to be extra benefits,

whatever it might be, something to encourage them to have that

accident free project,

focus on the positive consequences that result from the desired

behavior as a way to motivate employees. You can say, for

example, if we manage to finish this project on site. First of

all, top management is going to look at us very favorably. That's

going to improve the profitability of the company. It's going to

improve the competitiveness of the company. Is going to reduce the

cost to insurance for the company, which is going to reflect on the

employees of that company, giving them better opportunities and so

on. So this is a positive enforcement of a good behavior

that might result in less accidents.

Apply scientific methods to improve attempts at behavioral

intervention. So again, when should encouragement work and one

should a.

Penalties work and on which people again, in some cases you want to

set an example so that a bad behavior would not be repeated.

Use theory to integrate information rather than to limit

possibilities. Again, remember in the previous slide we thought

about one of the questions to be asked, what would we lose if the

task is not done at all? Sometimes you have to do the task. It's part

of the scope of the project. Therefore, the idea of the test

not being done is not acceptable. So we're going to use the theory.

Okay, since we're going to be doing it, how can we do it in the

most safe fashion, following all of these precautions and following

all of these steps at trying to change the behavior of the

performance of this task so that we can finish it without any

accidents,

and finally, plan interventions with the feelings and attitudes of

the individual employee in mind. So if you have an employee who is

down today, for example, due to

job related stresses or domestic stresses or whatever, try to

encourage them, try to talk to them, try to get them out of that

mood of depression, because that might result, again, in absent

mindedness, which usually leads to accidents and injuries on site.

So we're going to have activators

that lead to behavior. You activate people through

encouragement, through incentives, etc, that leads to a better

behavior, that leads to better consequences, which is basically

not having

any accidents which might lead to outcomes. The outcome is the

project is accident free. Everyone gets a reward, and the company

performs better and gets better recognition,

hazardous operation management. Basically, we're going to think

about how to select a method and then apply that method that's

safe, monitor and observe while the action is taking place, to

make sure that what the method that you selected was effective in

reducing the probability of accidents happening, and assess

that effectiveness, we were successful by 95%

or 98% of the time. This results in no accidents. So what about the

2% should there be any corrective action for this extra 2% and

finally, adjust as necessary, maybe this 2% was primarily

personal issues. These people should not have been there in the

first place. So next time we plan this, this operation again, we're

going to avoid having people of that type who did not properly

have the training, or have prior health problem problems or

something like that. We're going to avoid having them on on this

operation so that we can finish it with 100%

risk free or accident free fashion.

So this basically is our lecture about accident,

the theories, the different theories of accident causation,

you should learn about these, because these are going to have an

impact on how to motivate, encourage and delegate to people

on site so that you can have minimum amount of incidents or

accidents resulting in bodily damage or in property, property

damage. I will see you in another safety lecture. You