The Preventable Nature of Incidents

If there is one key insight from my career that I am always keen to share, it is that all incidents I have investigated were preventable, often preceded by overlooked indicators. Controversially, many incidents were actually predictable!

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Proactive Strategies for Workplace Safety: From Detective Superintendent to Industry Investigator

From my role as a Detective Superintendent to my current role as an industry investigator, my advice would always aim to be proactive and curious rather than waiting until something goes wrong.

Whilst safety is aways a priority for organisations, particularly in the rail industry, the challenge lies in cultivating an engaged workplace that actively scans for potential issues and embraces continuous learning. Its not a lack of care but a need for a shift towards proactive scanning and learning.

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Aligning with HOP Philosophy: The Essence of COMET Resilience

In the pursuit of genuine learning and improvement, emerging philosophies like Human and Organisational Performance (HOP) have proven pivotal. The five principles—acknowledging that error is normal, predicting error-likely situations, understanding the influence of context on behaviour, emphasising the significance of responses, and prioritising continuous learning—form the bedrock of HOP. Of course, human error is inevitable, but organisations can minimise the likelihood and effect of errors through habitual, proactive human-centric analysis.   Put simply…building organisational human error resilience.

In a recent collaboration with highly acclaimed HOP Consultant Andy Whitley, we integrated his expertise into our COMET audit and investigation toolkit, giving rise to COMET Resilience, a simple and powerful Learning Teams toolkit. Providing risk and assurance software and services for the rail industry, COMET has proven particularly valuable, with modules in use by Network Rail and major HS2 contractors.

The essence of COMET Resilience lies in its ability to align with the HOP philosophy. By facilitating learning teams, organisations can actively involve their people who are closest to the point of work in the reflective process. It's not just about waiting for an incident to occur; it's about nurturing a proactive and engaged workplace that continuously seeks improvement.

COMET is the world's only RCA system with accredited Human Factor Analysis integrated into its process, giving users a chance to identify areas for improvement (latent factors) and to recognise what your organisation does well (resilience factors), all in a safe and open manner, where blame plays no part.  If your organisation is keen embrace the HOP philosophy, COMET Resilience provides the perfect framework and captures the findings which will take your organisational learning and improvement to a new level.  

A Resilient and Engaged Workplace: Safeguarding Efficiency in Rail Operations

A resilient and engaged workplace is the cornerstone of safety and efficiency in the rail industry. The synergy between HOP principles and COMET Resilience provides a comprehensive and compelling approach to managing workforce engagement, thereby enhancing human and organisational performance in the rail industry.  Don’t wait for an incident to occur, find out more by visiting: COMET Resilience.

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