Accountability, superior safety

Accountability for safety performance in the superior performing companies is clearly established with line management at every level. Safety performance is one of the elements scored in the organization s overall performance measurement system. Favorable or unfavorable results influence salaries, bonuses, and promotion potential. 

In conversation, Petersen cited examples of managements having abandoned responsibility for safety because of the introduction of a behavior-based safety initiative, with adverse results. Unfortunately, some behavioral safety practitioners have created the impression that behavioral safety is the panacea, the cure for all problems. This is an absolute Superior safety (or quahty) cannot be achieved without management direction, involvement, and accountability. 

If an entity wants to achieve superior safety results, safety must become a core value within the organization s culture. Safety is culture driven. When safety is a core value within a company, senior management is personally and visibly involved and holds employees at all levels accountable for results. The senior executive staff displays by what it does that safety is a subject to be taken very seriously, a subject that is considered in performance measurement ong with other organizational goals. 

Make sure your proposal fits the corporate style and culture. Make sure your expectations for senior management are consistent with your company s operating style. For example, a CEO who is accustomed to delegating most decisions is unlikely to accept a role that seems to take away divisional authority, while a facility manager with little functional autonomy will probably be leery of taking a highly visible role without approval from a superior. Of course, the CEO retains overall accountability for environmental and safety performance—that cannot be del ated ... 

Discussions of achievements with safety professionals whose oiganiza-tions had top scores did not produce any surprises. Incident investigation for hazard identification and analysis gets done best where the organization s culture includes accountability for superior performance. Here is an aggregate Mst of the conoments made in discussions with safety professionals in those entities with the best incident investigation systems ... 

However, many of those in leadership positions take responsibility without being held accountable. Such a culture can discourage recognition of safe behavior and prevent criticism of unsafe or suspicious conduct by superiors or even peers. Hierarchical management structures thus can inhibit reliance on coworkers to report or prevent breaches in safety or security. 

This section of ZIO requires that management define roles, assign responsibilities and authority, provide the necessary resources (financial and human), and, I emphasize, establish accountability. If a management accountability system for safety, health, and environmental results is not in place, management commitment to attaining superior results is questionable. Accountability without consequences is not accountability. 

A safety director in a very large municipal organization with about 13,000 employees read an article this author wrote in which the necessity of having a positive safety culture to achieve superior performance levels was emphasized. That organization s work is considered high-hazard and fatalities and serious injuries often occur. The safety director had concluded that the senior executive in his organization, to whom he reported, was somewhat removed from the leadership necessary to further reduce fatalities and serious injuries, and that he did not hold the staff reporting to him accountable for their incident experience. 

Supervisors will do what they perceive to be important to their superiors. If their superiors convey, by what they do, that safety is important, be assured that supervisors will so respond. If supervisors are held accountable for the prevention and control of hazards and to achieve acceptable risk levels, success will result. 

The inherent safety characteristic against postulated events is the most remarkable superiority of a liquid metal cooled reactor (LMR) to other type of reactors. One of the major threats to the safety of LMR is a loss of flow event accompanied a failure of reactor shutdown systems. This situation is usually referred to as an unprotected loss of flow (ULOF). The inherent safety of the Korean Advanced Liquid Metal Reactor (KALIMER) during the ULOF [I] has been assessed for the situation of all pump trips followed by coastdown. It was assumed that the decay heat is removed by four intermediate heat exchangers (IHXs) and the safety grade system of passive safety decay heat removal system (PSDRS). The results showed that the power was stabilized by the reactivity feedback of the system even though the effect of the gas expansion module (GEM) was not taken into account. 

Food safety enforcement was not a high priority for the George W. Bush Administration. FSIS inspeetors faeed constant pressure from their superiors to keep produetion lines moving. Formal instructions to inspectors stated that they were authorized to stop a line only if a product that is going into the food supply has been direetly eontaminated and you can justify the production loss. A May 2002 memorandum told Kansas City inspectors that they could be held accountable for lost produetion if they slowed the lines to check for feces or to wash their hands, beeause small smears of feces on meat were tolerable. ... 

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