Top Ten Safety Stories of 2006
It wasn't until this morning that I finally ran across my first workplace safety blog. You would think I would have seen one earlier than this, but it's not that surprising, really. There's something very anti-new-tech about the profession -- understandably so, given our history with miraculous new technologies that will make the world better. As a safety pro, when a design engineer comes to you brimming with excitement over some brand new bit of tech, your usual gut reaction is, Great. I know nothing about the new and interesting ways that thing breaks, and neither does anybody else. We get to be the people they're gonna write the "if only they had realized" case studies about.
Anyway, the professional safety blog... After reading his take on the Top Ten Safety Stories of 2006, I'm remembering all over again how miserable I was in that job. Simply reading the article produced all sorts of unpleasant physiological reactions -- I could feel my heart speed up, my breathing go shallow, the muscles across my shoulders clamping down. Stress reactions, mostly, remembering how damn political the job of a corporate safety pro is, even at a firm that's reasonably coherent about workplace safety. Economic needs on one side, human hopes on another, and a damnably huge area of risks and trade-offs that you can't even identify, let alone quantify. That job made me a huge fan of gravity: in a world full of effects I couldn't predict, things fall down became the one thing I could rely on.
My visceral reaction to the article was a bit of a surprise to me. In school this last term, one of my two major papers was about system failures. It had a distinct focus on industrial safety, and it was a blast to research and write. I enjoying reading thirty page expositions of the intricacies that led to the capsize of a drilling platform.* The systems analysis area of the safety field is enormously satisfying to me. And, yes, that absolutely includes all the human factors stuff.** This last term, working on that paper about the abstract causes of failure, digging through back issues of Professional Safety and re-reading ANSI standards,*** was satisfying. Satsifying enough that I had been wondering if I want to keep a finger in the safety field when I'm done with this degree.
But dealing with all the emotional/political crap, with the knowledge that a screw-up can mean someone's death? Never again.
...
I dunno how that sums up, practically speaking. Most safety-pro career paths are founded on field experience -- as I understand it, the ANSI standards are typically written on the side as resume-enhancers by people who mostly do fieldwork. There are a very, very few academic programs in safety.
Or maybe I should get into security, or some other such complex-systems field -- still lots of systems analysis, still lots of human-factors considerations, but the screwing-up stakes are quite a bit lower. (And, oddly, given that the stakes are lower, the pay is higher.)
... Bah. Time to stop obsessing, and go find something else to do with my day.
So, let me leave you with a chaser of geometric coolness: Reuleaux Triangles. (Or, an alternate selection for those who don't find geometry uplifting: Japanese Manhole Covers.)
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* That write-up sucks. See Victor Bignell's Understanding System Failures (Manchester University Press, 1984) for a better case study.
** The human factors stuff, actually, is the most interesting part of it. Watertight hatches don't help prevent capsize unless they're closed, and how to make sure that they're closed is a significant design problem. The thing I loved most about the old job was how to take a system that wasn't working due to human factors problems and redesign it so that it worked. Yum.
*** Yeah, I'll admit it: I like to read ANSI standards. They're nothing more than honking great, width-of-the-discipline, abstract case-studies, AND they encaspluate a whole bunch of history about the field. They're as good as reading the fire code. Think of them as the engineering-geek equivalent of reading the dictionary.
Anyway, the professional safety blog... After reading his take on the Top Ten Safety Stories of 2006, I'm remembering all over again how miserable I was in that job. Simply reading the article produced all sorts of unpleasant physiological reactions -- I could feel my heart speed up, my breathing go shallow, the muscles across my shoulders clamping down. Stress reactions, mostly, remembering how damn political the job of a corporate safety pro is, even at a firm that's reasonably coherent about workplace safety. Economic needs on one side, human hopes on another, and a damnably huge area of risks and trade-offs that you can't even identify, let alone quantify. That job made me a huge fan of gravity: in a world full of effects I couldn't predict, things fall down became the one thing I could rely on.
My visceral reaction to the article was a bit of a surprise to me. In school this last term, one of my two major papers was about system failures. It had a distinct focus on industrial safety, and it was a blast to research and write. I enjoying reading thirty page expositions of the intricacies that led to the capsize of a drilling platform.* The systems analysis area of the safety field is enormously satisfying to me. And, yes, that absolutely includes all the human factors stuff.** This last term, working on that paper about the abstract causes of failure, digging through back issues of Professional Safety and re-reading ANSI standards,*** was satisfying. Satsifying enough that I had been wondering if I want to keep a finger in the safety field when I'm done with this degree.
But dealing with all the emotional/political crap, with the knowledge that a screw-up can mean someone's death? Never again.
...
I dunno how that sums up, practically speaking. Most safety-pro career paths are founded on field experience -- as I understand it, the ANSI standards are typically written on the side as resume-enhancers by people who mostly do fieldwork. There are a very, very few academic programs in safety.
Or maybe I should get into security, or some other such complex-systems field -- still lots of systems analysis, still lots of human-factors considerations, but the screwing-up stakes are quite a bit lower. (And, oddly, given that the stakes are lower, the pay is higher.)
... Bah. Time to stop obsessing, and go find something else to do with my day.
So, let me leave you with a chaser of geometric coolness: Reuleaux Triangles. (Or, an alternate selection for those who don't find geometry uplifting: Japanese Manhole Covers.)
---
* That write-up sucks. See Victor Bignell's Understanding System Failures (Manchester University Press, 1984) for a better case study.
** The human factors stuff, actually, is the most interesting part of it. Watertight hatches don't help prevent capsize unless they're closed, and how to make sure that they're closed is a significant design problem. The thing I loved most about the old job was how to take a system that wasn't working due to human factors problems and redesign it so that it worked. Yum.
*** Yeah, I'll admit it: I like to read ANSI standards. They're nothing more than honking great, width-of-the-discipline, abstract case-studies, AND they encaspluate a whole bunch of history about the field. They're as good as reading the fire code. Think of them as the engineering-geek equivalent of reading the dictionary.