Pre-Accident Investigations

Todd Conklin is a Senior Advisor at Los Alamos National Laboratory, one of the world's foremost research and development laboratories, in the human performance and safety integration program.

’The concepts outlined in this absorbing book are eminently practical and have been tested in the field. Pre-Accident Investigations might well not only enhance safety but save organizations money - and potentially lives too.’ The RoSPA Occupational Safety & Health Journal, December 2012 ’Conklin slaughters many holy cows in this very readable book, including the notion of cause, which he rejects as simply a retrospective construct. Workers don’t cause failure; what workers do is trigger a whole lot of weaknesses that exist in environments, processes, systems, job sites, and in the work or organization itself. Conklin’s ideas are persuasive, challenging, crystal clear, and expressed with humility and acknowledgement of what he has learned from others.’ Safeguard, July/August 2013 ’In this book, Dr Todd Conklin provides a welcome insight into the state of play of contemporary workplace health and safety practice in America as well as some down-to-earth advice on work health and safety risk management. The author’s use of case studies, workplace examples and a conversational tone to describe safety failures and successes makes reading the book an easy and quick exercise.’ Australian & New Zealand Journal of Health, Safety and Environment, vol. 28, no. 3

• A story of failure. Why think about failure at all? Case study: the Titanic: a story to help you rethink how you think about failure. Change the way your organization reacts to failure . Pre-accident investigation tool. Case study: aviation accidents are the unexpected combination of normal aviation variability. Workers don't cause failure, workers trigger failure. Change is better when you manage change - and change needs to be managed. Case study: nine senior managers: a million different opinions on how to handle a problem...and nobody willing to change. Thinking about where failure will happen. Case study: a crashing limb: thinking about where failure will happen. Fundamentals training: introducing the ’new view’ to your old crew. Case study: how to win friends and influence workers. Starting the journey - the first steps. The four things that matter. Conclusion. Basic reading list for human performance.