Civil Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
safety in a way that takes their whole organisation with
them.
Once management are fully committed to improving
the safety culture they need to establish and promote
high standards of safety in the workplace. This must be
reinforced by clear leadership including acting in a way
that provides a clear and positive example for all the
individuals in the organisation.
Management then need to ensure that individ-
uals understand their role at work and are competent to
undertake that role. Everyone in the workplace should
have suffi cient relevant knowledge skills and experience
to operate confi dently and safely.
People at work cannot guess what they are
supposed to be doing. This is particularly true if what they
are expected to be doing is new. Therefore adequate,
focused training which, where possible, is tailored to the
individual training needs will play a major part in effecting
any cultural change. Opportunities will arise for training
and thereby improving the safety culture when there is,
for example, a change in the law, or the introduction of
new equipment or procedures or when individuals are
recruited or change roles.
Management need to constantly reinforce their
commitment with clear, consistent, understandable
communications. The safety ethos of an organisation
should be refl ected across a wide range of communica-
tion media. Care must be taken to ensure arrangements
are in place for effective communications both vertically,
up and down a hierarchy, and horizontally, across an
organisation.
Neither cultural change nor changes in any behaviour
at work can ever be achieved without convincing employ-
ees of the need to change. Once the need to change is
accepted it can only be effectively implemented if the
workforce feels that they have a serious and important
contribution to make. Therefore among the tools available
for managers to achieve cultural change are the formal
and informal methods of consultation with employees.
Within 90 seconds, she had settled on her side on
the seabed and, despite rescue craft being on the scene
in as little as 15 minutes, a total of 193 passengers and
crew died. It was the worst British peacetime accident
since the
Titanic
.
The subsequent public inquiry found that the bow
doors through which cars and lorries were loaded had
not been closed before she left her berth. As a result
water began entering the car deck and very quickly
affected her stability, even though the sea was calm.
The accident involved a phenomenon called the 'free
water effect', which can cause catastrophic instability in
vessels when even a few centimetres of water enter a
hold or deck and, moving when the vessel rolls or turns,
destroy its stability.
It was the policy of the company at the time that the
ship did not sail with the bow doors open. However, the
routine practice had evolved to leave port with the doors
open in order to allow the fumes which had built up in
the hold during loading to dissipate. Members of the
crew were very well aware of the risks associated with
this routine violation of a fundamental safety rule and
attempted to bring it to the attention of senior managers.
The inquiry into the disaster, conducted by Sir
Richard Sheen, found that workers had in fact raised their
concerns about the risk of leaving the bow doors open
on fi ve separate occasions, but the message got lost in
middle management. The inquiry concluded that the
operating company, Townsend Thoresen, was negligent at
every level and 'From the top to the bottom, the corporate
body was infected with the disease of sloppiness.'
A coroner's inquest into the capsizing of the
Herald
of Free Enterprise
returned a verdict of unlawful killing.
Many of the victims' families made it clear they wished to
see the Townsend Thoresen company directors (now part
of P&O) face prosecution but due to the existing legal
framework it was not possible in this particular case.
Charges of manslaughter were bought against the
company on the basis that the company could be held
criminally liable for manslaughter, that is, the unlawful
killing by a corporate body of a person. However, the
prosecution of P&O for corporate manslaughter ultimately
failed, since it was ruled that a prosecution can only
succeed if within the corporate body a person who could
be described as 'the controlling mind of the company'
could be identifi ed as responsible, and that the identifi ed
person was guilty of gross criminal negligence.
4.11
Case study
On the evening of 6 March 1987 a British car ferry, the
Herald of Free Enterprise
, left the dockside at Zeebrugge,
Belgium, for a routine crossing of the North Sea. The ship
was of a design called 'roll on roll off' (RORO) whereby
vehicles drove through large doors at one end of the ship
when loading and drove out through similar doors at the
other end to disembark. RORO vessels are constructed
with large, unrestricted car decks for maximum capacity
to allow them to load and unload quickly.
Shortly after leaving the port, while many of her 500
plus passengers were in the restaurant or buying duty-
free goods, the ship suddenly began to list to port.
4.12
Example NEBOSH questions for
Chapter 4
1.
Outline
the factors that might cause the safety
culture within an organisation to decline.
(8)
