The goal of this research is to review if an expansion of “stop work” authority to a “start work safely authority” and applying this to all functions in the organization, not just frontline workers, would result in a reduction of safety events and improve learning opportunities through clearer channels to discuss, review, and clarify arrangements before they were started.
This expansion of risk management to a holistic risk level includes the full lifecycle of a job and redefines success and failure and how barrier identification is determined. This model should result in each functional department determining its risk factors and preventative methods to prevent “passing risk along the line.”
“Stop work” has significant challenges as it is currently applied. “Stop work” means many controls had to fail. It is a last resort that also has cultural and intrinsic challenges that make it more difficult to apply than is generally proposed and understood.
When functions are engaged further back in the job lifecycle, each function was able to further define risk profiles and critical aspects within processes to identify weaknesses and potential failure modality. The authors reinvestigated high-potential events in which the root-cause analysis stated failure to stop work as a direct causal factor through the new lens of “safe to start.”
They then worked backward through the lifecycle of the job, reviewing each function as a barrier and identifying active and latent weaknesses in the processes, which resulted in the risk being realized at the front end. This paper presents two case studies where applying this method has reduced the occurrence of events.