Observation & Correction: breaking the accident chain before it starts

The directorship of ARB Access Group recognises, gladly accepts and embraces its duty of care both to its clients and its operatives. It is for that reason that ARB Access cites ‘Safe Production’ as its key priority, and to that end applies and embeds contemporary safety measures. Our Observation and Correction training programme is designed to give our supervisory-level staff the skills to break the developing accident chain, and prevent accidents from happening at all.

Understanding how accidents happen

The understanding of how accidents occur is well known, and typically refers to Heinrich’s Domino theory, posited in 1931. It hypothesises that all accidents occur in the same way and involve human interaction with hazards. Hazards may be described as conditions or practices with the potential for loss: an unsafe condition may be a trailing cable or buried service; an unsafe practice may be working without protective eyewear or ignoring safety signage.

The chain runs from a lack of control, through root causes and hazards, to the accident and the resulting injury. Our Controllers of Site Safety (COSS) and frontline supervisors are trained to step in with an effective intervention and break that chain before it reaches an accident.

What the programme covers

• Typical human traits
• Accident causation
• Perception of risk
• Hazard identification
• Intervention techniques

The result

Every COSS and frontline supervisor in the business, 21 in total, has received the training. ‘Free Lesson’ interventions to prevent accidental loss have increased threefold since the programme began, and during the period there have been zero accidents on site.