Behaviours Based Safety Management System

Staff at the University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology (UMIST) have extensive experience in the application of behaviour-based safety systems to the construction industry. In the United States, the work of Dr Thomas Krause and his colleagues at Behavioral Science Technology Inc, California, is particularly well known. It has shown that a behaviour-based approach to health and safety management can be an effective tool for increasing safety on construction sites and elsewhere, despite some practical problems of implementation. 

In the previous chapters the purposes of near miss reporting have been outlined and a framework of designing such a safety management tool has been presented. The importance of human behaviour as a dominant factor in incident sequences was stressed by developing a system failure classification scheme largely based on a theoretical model of operator behaviour. Also an overview was given of the organisational factors necessary for a successful implementation of a NMMS. 

This chapter discusses road traffic risks in a general sense and the possibilities that exist for managing these risks. This is followed by a brief introduction to road safety management. The Safe System approach to road safety management is introduced next this type of approach, which is currently used in Australia, the Netherlands and Sweden, is discussed and the similarities and differences among the three countries approaches identified. The chapter concludes with some lessons to be learned about the behavioural adaptation of organizations in relation to executing road safety policy, especially where policy is based on the Safe System approach. 

The module is concerned with the techniques which can be applied to all main types of hazard and in particular with methods of general application for improving systems and human reliability. The module is also concerned with the ways in which changes in organisational structure and behaviour may be used to improve the control of work-based hazards. Within the module there is emphasis on the integration of safety and health with all management functions of the organisation. 

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