Improving and Evaluating Safety

How do investigators address risks and enact safety improvement? And how do they determine where to focus those efforts? The answers to these questions are complicated by the organisational arrangements within which safety management is conducted. Investigators, like many risk managers, are typically based in independent safety oversight departments with no executive authority or direct operational responsibilities. This separation between safety oversight and operational control is common in many risk management systems and is designed to encourage the reporting of safety incidents and other safety information, and to provide an independent, impartial and critical view on matters of risk and safety. But this separation also dramatically influences how investigators can act on risks and improve safety. With no direct control over operational departments, investigators work in more subtle ways to initiate, coordinate and shape safety improvement activities. This chapter examines how investigators respond to and address organisational risks. It explains how investigators view the purpose and objectives of their safety interventions, what forms those interventions take and how appropriate action is evaluated, decided upon and carried out.