Load-Out
By Steven Adelman
The Myth Of Situational Awareness
Exhibit A . I was first introduced to the concept of situational awareness long before I knew the term . It was back in 1994 . I was a third year law student and a member of Boston College Law School ’ s trial advocacy team . We were a strong group , winning the Northeast regional competition , so we were invited to participate in the National Trial Competition , which was held in Dallas that year .
I have no idea how many of my fellow 3Ls saw these mugs before I got to the table and started laughing .
This is hardly an isolated incident . The fundamental problem with safety professionals piously advising the boots on the ground to be situationally aware is that people miss the easy stuff all the time .
All the competitors and coaches were put up in a swanky hotel near the courthouse . There was no prize money and not many perks , but it was a great honor and an exciting way to start my life as a lawyer .
There was an item of swag , however , that was particularly amazing . One day a table in the hotel lobby was stacked with a lovely pyramid of coffee mugs , each emblazoned with the familiar scale of justice design and the words , “ National Trail Competition .”
I did a d o u - ble-take . As you can see , I had read the words correctly . The commemorative mugs created for all the law student participants had a typo in the single most important word . Naturally , I grabbed a couple as souvenirs . And then I got to thinking .
How many people , I wondered , had looked at this misspelling and thought , “ Yeah , that ’ s okay ?” First there must have been the typesetter ; then someone else in the print shop probably approved the design ; then somebody representing the competition likely signed off before it was printed on several hundred mugs ; someone else opened the boxes at the hotel and created the mug pyramid I saw ; and finally an event organizer smiled at the prospect of us eager law students reducing the pile to rubble . At each step , someone whose job included looking at the design saw the typo , but observed nothing , and therefore said nothing .
Exhibits B and C . Now that I am a lawyer whose practice concentrates on safety and security in public places , I give a lot of presentations and training sessions , often in hotel conference rooms . Sometimes , all I have to do is show up in order to get good new material .
I was invited early last year to present at a weeklong conference about safety and security in public accommodations . The program was held in a reputable hotel in a major metropolitan area . That location was selected to be convenient for the program staff , whose home office was located nearby . Yet , despite all these advantages , they too slipped on a giant banana peel .
When we instructors arrived , the screen on which we were to project our slides had been set up directly in front of the emergency exit doors . It was not hard to see this problem , as the Exit sign remained visible above the screen . Moreover , the entire purpose of the conference was to train venue and event professionals about safety and security issues in locations like this , so you would think there would have been heightened sensitivity to this sort of error .
I leave it to you to decide whether the greater problem was that the hotel , for whom this
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