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September 29, 2016

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Why I’d like to meet Frank

By Richard Byrne BSc (Hons), CMIOSH, PIEMA

I have been really lucky in that I have either worked with, or studied under some of the influential safety thought leaders all of whom have left a lasting legacy in the world of health and safety, including the likes of Allan St John Holt, Professor Richard Booth and Dr Tony Boyle.  There is one person though that I would have liked to have known as I’d love to get his take on my thoughts on his most well-known piece of work – Frank E Bird Jnr.

The recipient of several honours for his work in the health and safety field, including a Distinguished Service Award from RoSPA and an inductee of the International Safety and Health Hall of Fame; what Frank did to shape our thinking to safety improvement cannot be overstated.

Like most safety professionals, business leaders and managers, I first came across Frank’s work in the context of his ‘Accident Triangle’, which demonstrates the statistical relationship between workplace fatalities, serious injury events, minor accidents and near misses in a ratio of 1: 10 : 30 : 600.

frank-bird1

 

Now the thing is, whilst I accept there is a statistical relationship between the elements of the model, the more I think about it, the less valid Frank’s ratio seem.  Here’s why:

    1. The study used to determine the relationship was huge. Nearly 1,700, 000 events were looked at from a base of something like 3 billion working hours, which you think would give you real confidence in the dataset but it was done in the late 1960s. Industry, and the way we work, has changed dramatically since then.
    2. Frank was American and his work was based on an American dataset, yet we happily apply the ratios to working populations in all parts of the world. From what I have seen around the world, different societies have different outlooks on risk and work – does this have a bearing on the ratios?

I’d really love to buy Frank a cup of tea and get his take on this, sadly I can’t as he died in 2007. Looking around for some answers I always seem to end up back at the Health & Safety Executive’s 1996 edition HSG65 (Successful Health and Safety Management) which had a UK based at triangle of 1 serious event to 7 minor ones and 189 near misses, but even that is 20 years old now. “So what?”, you might be asking, well here are three thoughts:

    • What is the value left in Frank and the Health & Safety Executive’s work?
    • Is it about time there was a more up-to-date relationship defined?
    • Assuming there is merit in my argument, then should we be using these in the training and development we give people to help them work, manage and lead safely?

All this said there are still, for me, two very important practical uses for an Accident Triangle. The first is the obvious one – to help work out the level of reporting going on in particular under reporting of events. The second is that they help provide more insight into people’s risk awareness, for example the lower the ratio of near misses to big ticket events (say reportable or lost time accidents) the lower their risk awareness, the higher the ratio the better their perception.

Of course following this approach you run the risk of it becoming a numbers a game. However this is, of course, only one measure in a set of performance indicators but it is what you do with the data that counts; at a local level to make the situation safe and more globally you look at the trends and address them doing so helps prevent the bigger ticket items – at least that’s the theory.

And there’s the rub.

There is a growing school of thought in the profession that this sort of approach, focusing on low level consequence incidents like near misses do not actually help prevent the more serious and fatal accidents.

Part of me gets that and, if we look to the high-hazard, safety critical industries many risk rank their near misses and focus on the potentially significant and/or potentially severe ones whilst looking at the general trends for the others. But then I can’t help but think if your risk awareness is good, it will help you avoid the low level events like cutting yourself and tripping on a pothole as well as the more significant ones like falling from height.

All in all it sounds like the makings of a perfect research project for someone to me!

A tribute to Frank Bird is available at here which this blog takes some of its information from.

Richard Byrne is health and safety director for the contract merchanting division of Travis Perkins

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Paul Eccles
Paul Eccles
7 years ago

Very interesting article. I for one have rarely quoted actual numbers from any of the triangles in circulation but emphasise the relationship between the categories, thereby encouraging people to report accidents and near misses. I have usually followed this up by saying that by investigating the near misses helps prevent people getting hurt and when you have significant numbers of near misses being reported then you’re likely getting most of the accidents being reported. Certainly making me think a review is in order.

Darren Sutton
Darren Sutton
7 years ago

Great blog Richard and very much in line with current thinking in this area. Have you read Black Bix Thinking by Matthew Syed yet? Some good new challenges to ootdated theories in there too!

Heather
Heather
7 years ago

Hi Richard, lots of research done on this already as I understand with a seminal study in Finland! I would refer you to the safety differently site – or talk to Daniel Hummerdahl. Great piece – nice writing, Heather

Gary W
Gary W
7 years ago

Perhaps its your turn to buy the coffee Mr Byrne to continue the Safety Differently discussion

Christopher J Ward
Christopher J Ward
7 years ago

I used the pyramid in a number of ways during my time with HSE (I helped in the revision of HSG 65 in 2013). Both then and thereafter I found the most useful approach to gain the initial interest and engagement of a lay audience was to show how by reducing the width of the bottom layers of the pyramid one could eliminate the chances of a fatal accident. People understood that quickly. Show it visually by moving a ruler at the appropriate angle of one of the sides and watch the top layers magically disappear. Well done Frank and… Read more »

Max Klein
Max Klein
7 years ago

Yes, a thought-provoking blog, Richard. Intuitively ratios, such as between near misses and major events, do indicate levels of risk awareness. And, irrespective of the triangle used as an analytical model, your insight that good risk awareness helps avoid low level events as well as having an impact on major ones underlines the fundamental importance of risk awareness. The focus here is on how the triangle can be used. There’s a parallel take on its limitations in Behavioural safety – one Triangle or two? on http://www.insidetrackmedia.co.uk/ITM2012/news.html#news5 .

Timothy Van Goethem
Timothy Van Goethem
7 years ago

It is not only a thought school that contradicts the statement that “near misses help prevent the more serious and fatal accidents.” You have for instance the report of Accidents and fatal accidents some paradoxes, A. Saloniemi*, H. Oksanen (Safety Science 29 (1998)) that contradicts this and also the Flight Safety Digest of april 2000 – passenger mortality risk estimates provide perspectives about airline safety contradict this. But. These schools of thought are not saying that you don’t need to work on the small events, it even states that if you have a higher degree of reporting you will have… Read more »