Safety management practices have changed significantly over time
Why learn about the history of safety?
It is useful to briefly describe the history of safety management to understand ARPANSA’s aims and objectives in promoting Holistic Safety.
What should be clear from the following is how the overall aim to improve safety and prevent accidents has influenced how safety management is applied and what approach is adopted. This can even be traced back to the second millennium BC, where Babylonian King Hammurabi set laws to execute masons whose constructed houses fell and killed the owners or occupants.
The following aims to provide a brief chronology of the major changes in safety management that have occurred since its inception. These are discussed in terms of the different phases or ‘ages’ of safety management: The ‘technological’ age; the ‘human’ age; the ‘organisational’ age; and the ‘systems' or 'holistic’ age.
First age of safety management — the technology
The first age of safety started with the Industrial Revolution in 1750-1760 and the invention of the steam engine.
Most accidents were from the technology failing, injuring workers and the public. The focus of safety management was to ensure the technology was safe to use.
‘if the technology is safe, then we will be safe’.
This view of safety management became part of what known as the ‘technical age’ or the age of the technology.
This technical age saw improvements in the ability to identify the ‘broken part’—the part of the technology that failed—and avoid single component failures. Sophisticated techniques (such as probabilistic risk assessment) for managing risky technology were developed for this purpose.
Technological failures, problematic for so long, could now be ‘engineered out of the system’. This is what most people thought until the meltdown of the Three Mile Island reactor (TMI).
The accident came as a surprise to engineers and managers. Despite all the risk assessments and technological safety features, the reactor nevertheless melted down. The President’s Commission into TMI found the causes to be “people-related problems and not equipment problems”.
As hardware and software had become increasingly more reliable, the human contribution to accidents had become ever more apparent.
In response, it was necessary for the focus of safety management to expand so that the human element (the human factor)—as well as the technology—was addressed thus creating the second age of safety management—the human factors age.
Second age of safety management — the human
This age of safety management expanded to focus on the human (human performance) as well as technology.
Systems were designed to be human error tolerant so neither human action nor single faults would result in accidents. Much of this work focused on man-machine interfaces and workspace layout.
This view of safety management continued until accidents such as the Challenger space shuttle accident and Chernobyl reactor meltdown. Safety practitioners were again required to rethink their approach to managing safety. More than simply technical faults or human error, the Presidential Commission into Challenger found a “propensity within management to contain potentially serious problems”.
Chernobyl reactor.
The IAEA reported similar findings and provided recommendations that addressed more than simply the technology or the people operating the reactor.
“creation and maintenance of a nuclear safety culture”
These accidents and others (such as the crash of Air Ontario Flight 1363 and the Exxon Valdez oil spill) sparked another paradigm shift in safety management. No longer was it enough to simply focus on the technology or the human. Organisational factors (such as management and safety culture) also needed to be addressed to maintain safe operations. This signalled the start of the third age of safety management—the organisational age.
Third age of safety management — the organisation
This age of safety management expanded to focus on the organisation as well as the human and technology.
Safety management in this organisational age saw human error and technical failures more as a consequence than a cause. Errors were viewed as the ‘tip of the iceberg’ for more serious latent conditions and problems higher up in the organisation e.g. poor leadership for safety or safety culture.
Without removing these problems and others existing higher up in the organisation, failures at the ‘sharp-end’ would continue e.g. without removing the ‘parent problems’, ‘progeny’ errors and technical failures will continue to appear. New safety management models and assessments appeared which enabled safety managers to find and then remove weaknesses higher up in the in the organisation (e.g. safety culture or climate surveys) that could lead to serious accidents in the future.
‘if the organisation is safe, then we will be safe’.
This view continued until accidents such as the 2003 Columbia Space Shuttle disaster. More than simply isolated failures at the organisational level or clear human and technological failures, the Columbia Accident Investigation Board (CAIB) found causes in the complex and interdependent interactions of the technology, human and organisation present at the time of the accident.
‘systems fail in complex ways’
By trying to accurately describe this complexity, the CAIB considered that control measures could be better designed to prevent such accidents happening again.
This accident and others sparked another paradigm shift in safety management. No longer was it enough to simply focus on technological, human and organisational factors in isolation. The complex interaction and interdependency also needs to be described, signalling the birth of the current age of safety management—the holistic or systems age.
Fourth age of safety management — the systems/holistic age
This holistic approach aims to understand the complexity of day-to-day work by describing the often complex interrelationships and interdependencies between the technology, human and organisation.
This allows the description of the organisation to more closely reflect the true reality today’s work which can often be complex e.g. people working together using complex technology across multiple locations and divisions within the organisation.
Without using this Holistic Safety approach, we are effectively only seeing part of the picture, or only a few pieces of the ‘puzzle’.
Adopting the holistic approach means seeing more clearly how each piece of the puzzle fits in, affects, and is and dependent upon other pieces.
This not only provides a more complete or ‘real’ picture of the context but also means control measures and steps taken will be both more efficient and effective at avoiding accidents. This is different to the other ages of safety where:
isolated or component failures are identified e.g. blaming the person last in line of the accident ‘chain’—people at the ‘sharp-end’
identifying upstream, contextual factors as erroneous (e.g. poor safety culture) without actually describing why they appear.
This is why Holistic safety is now widely regarded as best practice, and why ARPANSA encourages licence holders to adopt a holistic approach to safety management.
The first age of safety started with the Industrial Revolution in 1750-1760 and the invention of the steam engine. Most accidents were from the technology failing, injuring workers and the public. The focus of safety management was to ensure the technology was safe to use.
A mine explosion in 1968 causing 68 deaths in Farmington, W.Va., spurred Congress to pass the Coal Mine Health and Safety Act of 1969. In the context of Federal action, President Richard Nixon presented his version of a comprehensive job safety and health program to Congress in August 1969.
The initial pressure for government remedies came primarily from labor groups. Investigations by state labor bureaus of dangers to workers' safety and health helped fuel a successful drive by labor for state factory acts in the industrial North, beginning with the Massachusetts Factory Act of 1877.
Poor workers were often housed in cramped, grossly inadequate quarters. Working conditions were difficult and exposed employees to many risks and dangers, including cramped work areas with poor ventilation, trauma from machinery, toxic exposures to heavy metals, dust, and solvents.
Workplace safety evaluation, education, and enforcement are known as the “Three E's” of workplace safety and will help you familiarize yourself with safety protocols from start to finish.
In the 1930's, William Herbert Heinrich, the father of safety published theories about safety and health in the workplace. One of these theories became known as the Safety Triangle, also known as the Safety Pyramid, the Heinrich Law, or the 300:29:1 theory.
Before the 1970s, there was very little legislation on safety in the workplace. In fact, prior to the workers' compensation movement in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, workplace safety was basically nonexistent.
On March 25, 1911, 146 garment workers were killed in the the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire in NYC. Most of the workers were young, immigrant women. This disaster was a critical event in the history of the U.S. labor movement. There was only one fire escape, which collapsed during the relief efforts.
“OSHA has contributed to a significant decrease in worker injuries over time, but the agency could be even more effective.” “When there has been strong leadership and commitment and OSHA has focused its efforts, the agency has made a real difference.”
Those not covered by the OSH Act include: self-employed workers, immediate family members of farm employers, and workers whose hazards are regulated by another federal agency (for example, the Mine Safety and Health Administration, the Department of Energy, Federal Aviation Administration, or Coast Guard).
In the 1960s, unions helped mobilize hundreds of thousands of workers and their unions to push for federal legislation that ultimately resulted in the passage of the Mine Safety and Health Act of 1969 and the Occupational Safety and Health Act of 1970.
SAFETY FIRST MOVEMENT, a twentieth-century movement to reduce workplace hazards. Severe accidents were common—and much higher than in Europe—in the large industries of the nineteenth century. In 1877, Massachusetts pioneered in the establishment of factory safeguards and, in 1886, in the reporting of accidents.
The working conditions in factories were often harsh. Hours were long, typically ten to twelve hours a day. Working conditions were frequently unsafe and led to deadly accidents. Tasks tended to be divided for efficiency's sake which led to repetitive and monotonous work for employees.
Twelve million other people boarded ships to come to America between 1865 and 1900. About half were Germans and Irish, and almost a million were British, many of whom had gained industrial experience in Europe. Each period of economic boom drew thousands of unskilled workers to American industry.
SAFETY FIRST MOVEMENT, a twentieth-century movement to reduce workplace hazards. Severe accidents were common—and much higher than in Europe—in the large industries of the nineteenth century. In 1877, Massachusetts pioneered in the establishment of factory safeguards and, in 1886, in the reporting of accidents.
One of the first publications to use the term in its current sense is the Process Safety Guide by the Dow Chemical Company. By the mid to late 1970s, process safety was a recognized technical specialty. The American Institute of Chemical Engineers (AIChE) formed its Safety and Health Division in 1979.
History. The first known safe dates back to the 13th century BC and was found in the tomb of Pharaoh Ramesses II. It was made of wood and consisted of a locking system resembling the modern pin tumbler lock. In the 16th century, blacksmiths in southern Germany, Austria, and France first forged cash boxes in sheet iron.
The word safety is grammatically a noun which, according to https://www.etymonline.com/, has been used from the beginning of the 14th century. The origin is, no surprise, from the Latin word salvus which means “uninjured, in good health, safe”.
Introduction: My name is Kelle Weber, I am a magnificent, enchanting, fair, joyous, light, determined, joyous person who loves writing and wants to share my knowledge and understanding with you.
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