Earlier this week I had the privilege to talk with a bunch of leaders from our contractor companies who are coming in to help out on the Upgrading Turnaround.  And, obviously, one of the things I did speak about was safety.  And while I regularly talk about safety, this time it was a little different.  And so I thought I would share here some of the key bullets that I discussed earlier this week.  

One of the key messages and comments that I made during my talk was that safety isn’t simply the absence of anybody getting hurt.  And we need to stop just measuring our safety results simply based upon the absence of injuries.  On the surface this may sound a little counter-intuitive because one could assume that if nobody gets hurt or if no one gets harmed, isn’t this a success?  And while zero harm is definitely a key success metric and something that we are all desiring and chasing, safety is much more than that.  We cannot simply rely on good luck to deliver the safety outcomes we desire.  We need to make sure that we have the right things in place to ensure success.  Safety includes the mindset, the behaviours and the actions that we undertake to assure or ensure the desired outcome of zero harm.  Safety is about the discipline that we need to exhibit to do the right things the right way at the right time to ensure that our good management delivers the outcome we desire as opposed to simply the good luck that might exist as the key reason as to why someone didn’t get hurt.  And good management makes sure that all these things come together ahead of every day and every task to deliver the safety outcome we want.

In summary:

• Safety isn’t simply the absence of anybody getting hurt.
• Safety starts with your mindset and this mindset infuses your behaviours and actions to assure a zero harm outcome.
• Luck is a bigger factor in our safety results than we realize.

As a take away, reflect on the role that you have with respect to ensuring that nobody gets hurt.  Are you relying too much on good luck to deliver the results you want?  Do you and your team members have the right mindset, behaviours and actions to deliver the result you want, or are there improvements that you can make in those categories?  We want to rely on good management to deliver world-class safety results, not simply good luck.