Posted By Smiff DuPont operate factories, with secure boundaries and they are should be able to exercise control over everyone and everything in the working environment. If all risks are subject to appropriate controls it may be possible to prevent all accidents. Also, you will hear "zero-accidents" in any American company, and a Senior Risk Manager of an American Corporation told me why; he said it is advice from the legal dept and helps fighting claims. If you talk of reducing accidents, or meaningful targets like in 18001, you have made a statement to the workforce and lawyers that you will continue to injure people and therefore cannot defend claims when someone does get hurt, for whatever reason. It's culturally very different over that pond.

Posted By willhiem i suppose the whole thing about 'are all accidents preventable' is, it leads you to think about is there such a thing as 100% safety? I'd have to agree with dave's point above!

Posted By willhiem Sally, That’s true, and the example you give is pretty good, but on the other hand if you can prevent someone getting dermatitis then you are doing your job and sad to say its also saving the employer from possible legal action. Yes it is better to focus more on the inherently dangerous activities but you could also argue that its about improving peoples lives as well, no one wants to be breaking fingers / bones etc. At the end of your working day everybody wants to come home as they left, if that can be done no matter how small you're on the right track. You could spend all day waiting and supervising people so they all attach their harnesses while meanwhile down below you could have a G.O. using a consaw with no gloves / eye protection, ear defenders and no training, think of what could happen to them, cuts / dermatitis / respiratory problems / eye problems / hearing damage. That’s the reason risk assessment techniques are so important. and how risks are classified.

Posted By Tabs All accidents are preventable given a couple of things: 1. the accident can be imagined 2. enough financial resources are put behind preventing it Using examples given above, alternative forms of transport exist to allow you to stay a mile away from trains, and trains are stopped a mile back while you cross tracks. People eating cheese are always housed in camel-proof locations. I doubt we will ever have the finances or the public will to become accident free. Oh, and I like the accident triangle comment, but I think it is supposed to point to culture and sorting out the small things tends to lead to big things being sorted too.

Posted By willhiem now maybe my understanding of risk aversion is a bit out of place but the more i read 'Would the average man in the street see risk aversion and 'all accidents being preventable' as the same thing? Are H&S practitioners who believe that all accidents are preventable risk averse?' the more confused i get?? its not making sense to me!

Posted By Guderian All accidents are not preventable. Mathematical probability theory will answer that. Something that will definetley happen P = 1 Something that can't happen = 0 As we cannot be sure that within any safety system that we have truly covered/predicted and mitigated against ALL accidents (including freak truly random events) the P can never = 0. Therefore all accidents are NOT preventable, P might = 0.000000000001 etc, but the fact remains, you have not prevented all accidents or the possibility of an accident. Indeed the law doesn't call for P=0, its SFAIRP, as we all know, hence why the acceptability criteria for accidetns is set out in the HSE document 'R2P2' and the associated ALARP criteria. Hence the Dupoint theory is nonsense, that is not to say that is not a desirable aim. The game we are in is sensible/proportionate risk management.

Posted By Merv Newman R Joe The definitions may have changed a bit as they are/were based on OSHA definitions of injury levels. I left DP 15 years ago and haven't really needed to keep up with OSHA Lost Workday Case (LWC)- one or more days absence due to an injury at work. Restricted Workday Case (RWC)- no absence but unable to perform normal work Medical Treatment case (MTC)- an injury requiring the attention of a medically qualified person First Aid Case (FAC) - a minor injury which could be treated by a nurse or first aider. Note if "nurse" level treatment is required more than once e.g. heat treatment of a muscle strain, then the incident is bumped up to MTC level. The first three categories are reportable and thus called "Recordable Injuries" putting them on a fairly equal level of seriousness. DuPont sites are now compared on a "recordable" basis. MSDs require treatment at least at the MTC level and would normally end up, at least, as a RWC. "paper cuts" do count as they should be reported, treated as required and reported. And there are techniques for knocking up reams of paper without getting cut. My wife was taught them in the print trade at the age of 16. PPE was not provided. The DuPont philosophy is that every injury/incident has a cause. If an injury or an incident occurs then an effective investigation will reveal the cause(s). An effective action plan will lead to elimination or control of the causes. Do that enough times, generalise the action plans and you will gradually eliminate whole classes of accident causes. Thus every injury and (controllable) incident is preventable. Eventually. I put "controllable" in brackets as a number of causes may bo outside of management control. "Injury causing slips and trips ?" Yes, of course they count and yes, you can eliminate them. Pay attention to floors and staircases - their condition and cleanliness. Teach people to look where they are putting their feet. Walk, do not run. HOLD THE HANDRAIL. The one injury I had during 10 years on a 500 employee site was to an employee who slipped on an icy path. Actions : * the accompanying supervisor had previously noticed the icy patch and had only given a verbal warning. He got a written disciplinary letter. Both I and the production manager got severe telling-offs as we should have done more to "increase the awareness" of the supervisor. * Contractors were put on emergency alert to clear walkways as soon as it started snowing * We eventually (two years later) installed covered walkways between main buildings. Going on a bit (but you did ask) Management responsibility is taken very seriously. The above injury occurred at 03.30 Monday morning. The supervisor called the ambulance and then called me. I followed the ambulance through the gate. (fortunately the habit of not wearing pyjamas allowed some savings on personal response time) At 4AM the IP left in the ambulance and I called the plant manager. He was on site 15 minutes later (I didn't ask about his pyjama habits) While waiting for him the supervisor and I made sure that the injury site had been made safe (salting the path which should have been done at least an hour previously) At about 4.30 AM the plant manager and I made a tour of the site to verify that there were no other icy patches. At about 5AM the plant manager started to call HIS line management. The President Directeur Général of DuPont France in Paris. The Director of DuPont Europe in Geneva and the President of the DuPont company in Wilmington Delaware. I also called the European HSE Consultant (also in Geneva) He was on site at 9 AM. That is the procedure within DuPont : in case of serious injury or probable material loss, inform your line management within 24 hours. I think the President of DP (100 000 employees) got about 30 of those calls last year. And I dare say he had a few words to say. That was in 1984. I can still give you the names, the dates and the times as that was about the most traumatic event I experienced in 16 years of plant safety. And the only LWC. Just lucky or just good planning ? I think it was Jack Nicklaus who, hearing a spectator call on of his shots "lucky", replied "Right. And I find that the more I practice the luckier I get" Regards Merv

Posted By Safety Dave Merv, Thank you for that, it's truly inspiring stuff. Most if not all companies I've dealt with who pay lip service to aiming for zero injuries just don't cut it by comparison to DP (even those implementing STOP!). The next time I hear someone tell me they are aiming to create a genuine safety culture and "get to zero" I'm going to show them your post and say - "are you this committed? - well are you punk?!?"

Posted By Guderian To give an extreme example - it is not unusal for aircraft to crash because of bird strikes/bird ingestion in to engines etc. In theory these crashes can be prevented by either (and in theory are under management/human control - which gets around the modified Dupont criteria) 1) Stopping flying 2) Building much stronger/fault tolerant aircraft/engines 3) A different method of propulsion, not affected by bird ingestion 4) Cull all birds 5) Persuade all birds to keep clear of aircraft None of which are likely to happen in the near future. Therefore the probability of a crash from a bird strike remains a risk, hence P does NOT = 0, hence some accidents remain non-preventable. DuPont theory falls. However most of us accept the risk of flying because of the benefits it brings to us as individuals and as a society.

Posted By SB MCD Gents WOW - the award goes to this thread for boring me to death. You all need to take a chill pill..........

Posted By Safety Dave In short, of course all accidents are not preventable - as Donald Rumsfeld almost said - there are known knowns, there known unknowns but its the unknown unknowns that can't be legislated for and a lot of the "silly" accidents that remain after the preventable ones have been dealt with are unknown unknowns. As mentioned by others - it generally comes down to the predictability and probability of risk. After that you've got the individuals good (or bad) safety habits (improvable) and their reflexes (probably not that improvable!!)

Posted By Al.. 1) All incidents resulting in injuries are (individually) preventable; 2) We will have a target of zero incidents resulting in injuries; 3) It will be unacceptable for us to have even one person injured while at work. (1) is a pretty reasonable statement - cannot fault the logic of it. (2) is good inspirational stuff for the troops before they go over the top into the factory - always makes sense to aim high (or in this case low) (3) is nonsense - it requires zero risk and we can only get that if we close down and all go home. It's all rhetoric but if it gets the accident rates down to reasonable levels who am I to knock it. The problem comes when the message gets lost or misunderstood, rather like religion, but let's not go there.

Posted By Rob T This also apart from the fact that many minor incidents/accidents (whatever) are not reported by Du Pont staff because they are worried about the Draconian responses Du Pont put in place. As regard to holding the hand rail on stairs (and apparently not being allowed to take two steps at the time - I'm 6"3' and one step on some steps is more hazardous!) is concerned, they should just get a life. Even the RA regs state that you don't have to assess for things associated with every day life. No - not all accidents are preventable and never will be unless we all become robots. Human factors mean that we are able to think about other things when we are walking which means at times we are not so observant. If you aim for the impossible you will never reach your goal - so I refuse point blank to set a target of nil. I always aim to improve on the previous years figures and if that achieves a nil then all well and good - but of course one accident the following year means a 100% increase on your stats. Anyway that's my point of view - nobody has to agree with it but it is a point of view which is in line with the HSE telling people not to be risk averse.

Posted By anon1234 All incidents are preventable - however, you need to be able to identify the root causes to take appropriate action to prevent such incidents. This is sometimes extreemly difficult with hindsight, so therefore is unlikely to occur in all case prior to the incident, thus there will undoubtably be a certain level of incidents that occur. I think Merv and DuPont recognise this hence they may have much lower than industry averages but have not actually achieved zero. However, as another poster mentioned, if you don't aspire to achieving zero then you are by definition accepting performance which will not drive your incidents rate to the low levels they could be. Therefore whilst I don't subscribe to the theory that zero will be achieved, I do subscribe to the concept that you aim for zero as this will assist in ensuring you have done all you can to prevent harm.

Posted By Brando A couple of people have mentioned the "handrail" example. Reminding people to use the handrails is good sense - we had a chap break both wrists when he fell down the stairs - he was not holding the handrails. Would you rather have broken wrists or hold the handrails? How many incidents are caused by people not using "common sense"? We really do have to hammer these points home until they become second nature. Brando

Posted By R Joe Merv, thanks for the Du Pont insight. I'd be interested to get some more feedback about any similar experiences from those who have used or worked with the Du Pont 'all accidents are preventable' approach.