The Ingenieur Vol 59 July-Sept 2014 The Ingenieur Vo. 59, July-Sept 2014 | Page 40

INGENIEUR

FEATURE

Beyond
Traditional
Safety
By Ir. Shum Keng Yan

S

afety is a journey. Safety
is a lifestyle that safety
professionals offer to an
organisation. That is one of the
reasons why you hear that a lot
of organisations are aiming to
create a safety culture. Cultures
take time to build. What we have
is a progression in maturity or
commonly called the maturity
model. Here is a typical maturity
model.
However the challenge in all
organisations is the plateauing of
safety performance as each aims
for a zero accident rate. Let’s
look at the traditional building
blocks of a safety culture.

The Traditional
Safety Journey
Luck
Well, if we start from scratch, we
will begin with luck. The technical
term for luck (which no one
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wants to admit) is Near Miss/
Near Hit. This is what separates
a Near Miss from a more serious
outcome for the same incident.
Directive
Next, the safety professional
starts to put in place rules and
procedures to reduce risk which
work well until there is a lack of

supervision. Thus in reality, for
the rules and procedures to work
effectively, there has to be a lot of
policing and some organisations
fall into the trap of creating a
huge safety department to police
the implementation of safety. The
thinking of those who have to “do”
safety is that “what is not written
need not be done”! Brilliant!

VOL 59 JULY –2013
VOL 55 JUNE SEPTEMBER 2014

7/9/14 10:37 AM