Transcript Rationales and Stats

A Partnership Between Academia
and Industry
Ashleigh, Bussey, Putsman and
Townsend
Research into Construction Safety
Safety is no longer improving
Graph from ‘Safety Can’t Be Measured – Townsend, 2013
Rationales and Stats
• Most safety research world wide is untriangulated
• There have been no ‘designed research’ studies
to cross check conclusions
• There have either been statistical studies with
no supporting rationales, or
• Rationales with no supporting statistics
Rationales and Stats
Examples
• Heinrich’s pyramid/Bird’s triangle not followed
up – accident ratios do in fact change
• Logic diagrams not matched with actual data
• Safety regulation has ‘stood the test of time’
• ‘New thinking’ (Dekker, Hollnagel, Hummerdal
et alia)
TRIANGULATED STUDY THROUGH TIME
Newmont Gold Mining ‘Vital Behaviours’ Program
Listening to the Workforce
Recordable Accidents per 200,000 hrs
1
0.9
0.8
0.7
0.6
0.5
0.4
0.3
0.2
0.1
0
2010
1Q11 2Q11 3Q11 4Q11 1Q12 2Q12 3Q12 4Q12 1Q13
Newmont Gold Yield and Total Recordable Accident
Frequency Rate
Recordable Accidents per 200,000 hrs
1
0.9
0.8
0.7
0.6
0.5
2008-3Q2012
0.4
4Q 12 and 1Q13 recordable
injury rate significantly lower
than expected
0.3
0.2
0.1
0
0.00
0.20
0.40
0.60
0.80
1.00
(total gold recovered)/(total hard rock mined) %
4Q2012-1Q2013
The Objectives
• To develop new understanding of what causes
accidents in construction
• To do so with supporting statistical body of
evidence
• To explain it in language that makes sense to
the man in the street
Methodologies
Borrowed from other disciplines...
• Modelling from social/management sciences
• Statistical skills from community medicine
• Observation and diagnostic skills from
medicine
Progress to date
• Techniques tested with dummy data
• Preliminary data being collected
• ‘Prelims’ by end Sept
Needs
Short term...
–
–
–
–
–
Anonymous volunteer interviewees
Volunteer reviewers of ‘plain English’
Understand ‘significance testing’ and ‘confidence limits’
Understand ‘triangulation’
Industry funding
Medium term...
– Access to company databases
Long term...
– ‘Partial paradigm shift’
Lest I forget – without these guys I could not
have built projects