BEYOND HUMAN FACTORS

An I nt roduct i on

Safety management is not new, if you have read

the summaries of some of the very public

accidents we have provided in our LEARNING

FROM TRAGEDY article you will see common

themes across them all, factors associated with

failures in organisational control processes, the

‘right’ decision being compromised by

commercial pressure and a complacency based

on ‘getting away with it before’.

Si gni f i cant Fai l ure i s Rarel y

At t ri butabl e t o One Person

We called this article Beyond Human Factors

because very rarely has one person’s failure led

to a catastrophic loss. Human Factors

undoubtedly play a part in efficiency and

organisational performance, but in our

experience whilst one person making an error or

mistake (and we use those words deliberately)

may lead to operational interruption, delay, cost

or customer dissatisfaction, it won’t present a

threat to the viability of the business, risk to life

or catastrophic failure of the transport vehicle.

The Vi t al Rol e of Saf et y i n

Busi ness

Safety needs to be seen and managed as an

enabler of the organisational strategy. What we

mean by that is if your brand requires public

confidence in your product for people to buy

from you, then safety management plays in vital

role on preventing events from happening that

could damage that confidence. Remember too

that safety performance in public transport

organisations is rarely used as a unique selling

point; in fact it is often a taboo subject when

comparing oneself against competitors.

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