Introduction
Safety Decision Making: An Excerpt
Back in 2015, I was given the opportunity to speak to a Civil and Environmental Engineering class at Southern Methodist University. The intent of my presentation was to provide information on the Role and Responsibility of our future project managers, operations managers, CEOs, etc. on their impact on safety in an organization. While preparing for this speaking engagement I was trying to come up with a definition of safety that could be common to any industry, as a way of avoiding workers taking, or being allowed to take, the Easy or Familiar Way of “getting the job done.”
The Easy Way is typically the quickest and/or cheapest way of getting it done.
The Familiar Way is typically the way it’s always been done, according to the worker or manager.
Sometimes it’s both…the Easy and Familiar Way, even if it doesn’t follow one of the three basic safety Expectations: government regulation, company safety policy, client safety requirement.
So, while trying to decide on a definition, I also came up with an illustration. Every day we all are faced with multiple decision opportunities. In fact, studies show that an adult makes, on average, 35,000 decisions each day. And if we spend 8-10 hours at work, five days a week, are not most of those decisions related to our work? That is a lot of opportunity to make a mistake (as well as to make the right decision).
In my mind, I saw a crossroads…that point when we have to make one of those thousands of work-related decisions. Decisions that could impact one’s safety and health. Decisions that might very well decide if you make it back to your family at the end of the day.
Decisions that might cost someone their life.
At the crossroads, the left arm of the cross was the word, Easy. On the right arm of the cross was the word, Familiar. Going up the length of the cross from the base to the top was the phrase, The Right Way.
When thinking about what our overall safety requirements are, it provided this definition:
The Right Way: If we cannot follow OSHA regulations, company safety policy, or client safety requirements…whichever applies…we will not continue the work until we can.
