Going Into Battle
In August 2009, I was in Okinawa, Japan, preparing to depart with my unit to Afghanistan. As we were getting in our last hugs and kisses from family members, we were summoned to meet up to receive some news from our commander. Once our families were out of earshot, we were told that one of […]
Near-Miss and Good-Catch Reporting
An employee using a GFCI-protected extension cord had to push the reset several times to get the cord to work. The cord reset finally held, and he finished his task and returned the cord to the tool room. A few days later, another employee – using the same GFCI-protected cord – noticed the GFCI breaker […]
Train the Trainer 101: Lessons from Puerto Rico
I read the menu board and placed my order through the drive-through speaker. In her native Spanish, the employee assisting me rapidly confirmed my order and asked several follow-up questions; I answered “yes” to each question even though I didn’t understand what she was asking me. In the end, the order totaled $9.62. When I […]
Voice of Experience: Can Human Error Be a Root Cause?
In light of some recent incidents in the electric utility industry, numerous root cause investigations have been conducted to determine why those events occurred. The frequency of the events and their similarities are alarming. Some of the more recent cases involved induced voltages from nearby energized lines to de-energized lines and equipment. In one instance, […]
February-March 2018 Q&A
Editor’s Note: This installment of “Q&A” addresses some common questions Incident Prevention receives throughout the year. Most are misunderstandings of the wording or intent of OSHA standards. From time to time iP has addressed the following scenarios – or similar ones – because they never seem to go away. In the following answers, the research […]
Frontline Fundamentals: HP Principle One: People Screw Up
The first principle of human performance (HP) is that people are fallible and even the best make mistakes, or in simpler terms, people screw up. How error-prone are we? Studies vary, but for our purposes, we will use an average of five mistakes per hour. That’s a lot of mistakes, and a scary thing to […]