Research has shown that lack of nontechnical skills [also called crew resource management (CRM)] contributes to most personal and process safety incidents in high-risk industries. Situational awareness in the most influential nontechnical skill. The authors of this paper developed a disruptive program to generate situational awareness competencies and improve nontechnical skills of front-line employees. The program is called Permanent Attention. It combines best practices adapted from high-risk industries and industrial psychology science to generate statistically significant improvements in situational awareness competencies through a sustainable approach.
The paper shows real case applications from two organizations where the Permanent Attention program has generated significant improvement in the participants’ situational awareness competency and nontechnical skills (CRM) acquisition and retention.
The program is executed with the learner at the center of the process. The Situation Awareness Global Assessment Technique (SAGAT) is used to measure the levels of situational awareness competency before and after the training to determine the effect achieved through the program.
The training sessions between SAGAT implementations contain theoretical information and practical exercises that equip the participants with fundamentals. Exercises for each element of situational awareness have been designed to obtain optimal skills. To complement the practice of nontechnical skills, employees are exposed to simulations of critical operational situations so they can demonstrate their leadership, communications, teamwork, and decision-making skills in group and learn how to manage stress in such situations.
The levels of situational awareness competencies are periodically monitored via practical field-based SAGAT exercises after the training to ensure a sustained improvement in the participants’ competencies. The feedback provided immediately after each SAGAT is key to letting the participant focus on the elements of situational awareness that require improvement. Once the feedback is received, the participant is requested to self-evaluate their level on each element of situational awareness. This reinforces self-consciousness and encourages a sense of commitment to improve by conviction not by imposition.
This novel methodology gives the organization a clear metric on the return on the investment the program offers and allows very specific interventions to improve individual and group-level nontechnical skills across the organization.
Permanent Attention has been implemented in organizations with a wide range of maturity. Case studies are presented to illustrate the process, results, and limitations in two leading drilling companies, in which 60–70% of incidents had situational awareness as a contributing factor over past five years. The implementation of the program has brought statistically significant improvements in the competency of employees, and the pilot in Colombia has shown early signs of accident reduction.