SHE Improvement Plans...

1. Health, Safety and Environment
Weekly Safety Review 12 SIMS awaiting
Managers Comments First Aid Recordable
No. injuries ytd 4 0
Injury rate ytd 0 0
No. days worked since 142 Injury
Performance
Issue Date : 15 / 3 / 2011 last OSHA recordable (2/11/10)
INJURY
No. days worked since 142
Human Factors and Managing Emergencies last RIDDOR injury (2/11/10)
FREE
WEEK
1
DSEAR - Arrangements must be made to deal with emergencies, and
should cover safety drills and suitable communication and warning systems
Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order - Employers must plan, monitor and
review the measures taken to protect employees from fire at work – including
emergency exercises
COMAH Regulations - (Asset Protection response to COMAH sites & ECC
support to our customers for Major Emergencies)
When things go seriously wrong either in our home life (eg. domestic emergency) or
at work when unexpected operational incidents can occur, a number of
understandable immediate reactions may result :
- we can momentarily panic
- we can rush in to try and help
- we may not think clearly
- the opportunity for mistakes increases
In a work situation its important that we can minimise these, and exercising
or practicing our response to emergency situations is important so we’re not
caught out and can respond quickly and positively to bring the situation
back under control
As part of our 2011 Improvement Plan, and a number of local plans, we have
committed to undertake emergency exercises – part of which will be to identify
where any gaps may exist in our procedures or response (part of this will be
reviewing human factors and considering if there is anything further that can be
done to improve the reliability of our response to emergencies).
So what type of exercises should be undertaken ?........
The HSE are concerned that “companies focus too much effort on their current Risk
Management effort (performance measures, audits, behavioural modification) on
low consequence high frequency events such as single minor injuries caused by
tripping over. More effort needs to be applied to the lower frequency, higher
consequence events such as large volume releases of hazardous chemicals. These
are caused by underlying system failures and triggered typically by human error”.

2. From a human factors perspective, its important to recognise that we are
not superhuman and important control measures for improving our
‘thinking’ and action responses are to :
•Plan for relevant ‘what if’s’ (procedures for upset, abnormal or
emergency scenarios)
• Regular drills / exercises for upsets / emergencies
• Have decision making aids / flowcharts / schematics etc.
• Ensure competence (knowledge and understanding of the system)
In this weeks presentation a video of a tanker loading incident is included
and how the emergency was ‘handled’ is presented with a range of
human factors responses.
When you view the video what human factors elements can be identified
which reduced the effectiveness of the response?
Confident and Professional response to emergencies through
training and practice