CRSP Safety Leadership Subject Matter Expert

I have been working with and learning about the impact of focusing on Significant Injury and Fatality (SIF) Event Prevention for more than a decade. I have landed on the below perspectives as a seasoned safety practitioner:

• Preventing Significant Injuries (Disabling Injuries) and Fatalities is Most Important

• Preventing all Injury Events is Important

• Preventing Significant Injuries and Fatalities Should Be Performed in Alignment with Preventing all Injury Events (Balanced Approach)

A Serious Injury or Fatality (SIF) Event is an incident or near miss that could result in or has resulted in a fatal or life-altering injury or illness to a work family member. Life-altering and disabling injuries can include permanent or significant loss of a body part or organ function, or other permanent changes that disable a work family member’s normal life activity. Examples of serious injuries include major head injury, spinal cord injury, amputation, catastrophic fractured bones, and serious burns.

An Injury Event is an experience that causes a work family member’s body to be negatively impacted. Injuries can be caused by a variety of things that include motor vehicle accidents, falls, exposure to hazardous chemicals, being stuck by an item, and many more.

When I first heard about the focus on Serious Injury or Fatality (SIF) Events I jumped on the SIF “bus” and followed through with emphasizing the need to prevent Serious Injury or Fatality (SIF) Events in the work family I served at the time because of the profound negative impact the events. The focus on Serious Injury or Fatality (SIF) Events was categorized by the International Oil and Gas Producers (IOGP) Life Saving Rules:

• Bypassing safety controls​ – maneuvering around event prevention equipment and processes

• Confined space​ – entering spaces that are not designed for continuous or brief human occupancy based on the hazards that are present (e.g. physical hazards, engulfment hazards, toxicity hazards, and flammability hazards)

• Driving​ – operating a vehicle

• Energy isolations ​– working with hazardous energy forces (e.g. electrical hazards, chemical hazards, mechanical hazards, and other)

• Hot work​ – working with flame producing equipment

• Line of fire​ – being in the position of being struck by an item

• Safe mechanical lift ​– lifting items off the working surface that could injure others or damage equipment, if it was to fall

• Work authorization​ – formal approval to complete work from a governing person in a controlled area or on controlled equipment

• Working at height – completing task above the working / walking surface that could lead to a hazardous fall or dropping of an object onto others

Being hypersensitive to preventing SIF’s is appropriate for heavy industry groups that complete tasks that are identified above.

I have served on several corporate HSE Leadership teams that adopted the IOGP Life Saving Rules with no or very little change. Those groups created processes and systems to support effective communication, application, and follow up of the execution of the Life Saving Rules. We Emphasized Basic Safety Event Prevention with a balanced approach to the existing event prevention plan and inclusion of the Life Saving Rules Program and SIF focus areas:

• An executive sponsor was appointed to create and send inspiring messages about the SIF experience

• Specific SIF training to new frontline work family members through executive business leaders was provided.

• Routine SIF Best Practice and Lesson Learned Meetings were planned and executed.

When I served as the corporate HSE, Security, and Quality leader for a global engineering and construction company, we focused our event prevention energy and resources on our top safety risk based upon our specific work family experience and anticipated exposures. We created processes and systems to support effective communication, application, and follow up on the execution of our top safety risk prevention methods. We created a Little Safety Book to provide the in office and field work family members support in planning and executing safe work. Our list of top safety risk was similar to the IOGP’s and other groups, but it was not the same. Making our top safety risk prevention plans based on our experience provided a custom safety program focus that our work family members embraced. This process of making our custom safety program helped to deliver the best safety performance in the company history in leading and lagging indicators.

The top safety risk focus areas included SIF and Basic Safety elements:

Fall Prevention - We had work family members building structures several stories off the ground in 48 countries.

Journey Event Prevention - We had work family members operating vehicles across the globe in busy cities, country roads, mountain paths, and jungle trails. We also traveled by vehicle, air transport, train, and by boat.

Dropped Object Prevention - We had work family members building structures several stories off the ground by using large and small tools.

Hazardous Material / Environment Exposure Prevention – We worked in and around chemical and energy processing plants.

Confined Space Entry Event Prevention - We worked in spaces that were small / limited in egress that were not designed for continuous human occupancy that included one or more inherent safety risk (e.g., limited emergency escape, hazardous atmosphere, entrapment risk, and engulfment risk).

Hand Injury Prevention – All of our work as Constructors involved using our hands in controlled and uncontrolled environments. Most of our OSHA Recordable Injuries happened to our hands.

Ergonomic Injury Prevention – More than half of our work family members worked in administrative office settings. Our most expensive recordable injuries at one point during the company history came from ergonomic injuries.

Slips-Trips-Fall Injury Prevention – Traversing working and walking surfaces was the second focus area on our list of injury prevention.Balancing out our overall injury prevention program, with basic injury prevention categories (e.g., Hand Injury Prevention, Ergonomic Injury Prevention, and Slips-Trips-Falls Prevention), balanced out our overall injury prevention program and helped my work family in 2017 improve the overall safety performance that was the best in company history.

In summary, a Balanced Approach of SIF prevention and basic injury event prevention that is customized to the work family’s injury event experience and anticipated exposures has the greatest impact on achieving good to great safety performance.