Unlike most other business measures—think earnings growth or debt load—the traditional measures of safety performance tell us little about where existing functioning actually is, and where it is headed. The deficiency of safety measurement in describing actual performance is so common as to be a cliché. The reality is that there are many variables that determine the quality of safety functioning, variables that could be detected with the right set of metrics, processes, and analysis.

If you weren’t able to make it to the Chemical Safety Board’s (CSB) public hearing this week in Houston, Texas, you can now access that papers that were presented at it online.

Safety performance indicators are the best way of preventing catastrophic accidents like the one that struck the Deepwater Horizon in April of 2010.

The U.S. Chemical Safety Board (CSB) has formally voted to classify the American Petroleum Institute’s (API) response to the Board’s recommendation to develop an effective system of performance safety indicators as “Open- Acceptable Action.”