H. W. Heinrich changed the world of safety fundamentals forever with his pioneering work in the 1930’. One of his concepts that continues to make me think is his accident triangle (pyramid), a concept that we all are familiar with.

The search for viable leading indicators to replace lagging injury statistics is a hot safety topic these days. I do not believe we will ever be rid of injury rates as a metric used to judge safety performance.

To make a change in an industry’s safety performance, the first necessary element is a guiding coalition/steering team that will help work with the various idea/solution providers and the wide ranging customer base and its leadership. My team, Caterpillar Safety Services, has worked with similar guiding coalitions in: the wind industry; the electrical transmission and distribution industries, an OSHA strategic safety partnership; the North West Public Power Association (NWPPA); the National Mining Association, as well as large, decentralized industrial companies.

I use a concept called the Six Levels of Safety Performance as a practical model that takes an organization from a fundamental safety regs approach all the way through to an organization that is passionately engaged in leading the relentless pursuit of a zero-incident safety culture.

A blog follower recently asked: Is there anything from Caterpillar Safety Services outlining the positive things or actions that we can expect to see in facilities with “world-class” responses to the survey questions for each of the survey process elements? Back in the days of the survey development one of the team members, Dr. Dan Petersen, defined world-class safety as an organization that was within the best 10 percent of his customers at that point in time.

I recently received the following inquiry: “We're getting ready to perform safety coaching sessions with some of our frequently injured employees. Do you know of anyone who might have a script to outline the dialogue?”