Safety Insights: Success and Failure Stories of Practitioners

Public safety, as well as the safety of products and services, is of paramount importance and interest to individuals, organisations and society. Safety successes are achieved every second, but we take them for granted and we do not appreciate the challenges professionals meet to make the world as safe as possible. Safety failures are less frequent but become focal points of stakeholders and the public with a tendency to blame and not comprehend the context and the hard decisions professionals have to make when balancing safety with competing goals.

This edited book includes case studies from industry practitioners exactly as they experience them without relying on the understanding of researchers who conduct studies and try to map the overall situation per case based on multiple interviews, observations and questionnaires. Included are case studies from the aviation, construction, oil and gas, telecommunications, transportation, health and public safety industries. They are stories told by frontline practitioners who work to keep the public safe.

In each chapter, the author, based on his/her professional experience, shares two real cases, one success and one failure , explaining the background and approach, and critically reflecting why his/her initiatives and activities worked or didn’t work. They are descriptive of the case, context and tools, techniques, methods and approaches followed and include the valuable safety lesson learned. This book is a forum for professionals to express and share with others their knowledge and experience usually found implicitly or hidden under formal and informal practices.