Professional Development Flashcards
Reflection Cycle
- Plan
- Do
- Review
Why such large consequences of Katrina?
- pumping system breakdown
- poor consideration of failure
- evacuations
How did such a weak system (New Orleans) eventuate?
- social context
- mixed responsibilities
- risk management for natural hazards
What can we learn from New Orleans?
- Great wall of Louisiana
- redirect river and retreat
- add resilience
- develop trust
Contributing Factors to Hyatt Regency
- fast-track project
- architectural design changes
- drafting errors
- phone changes without write-up
- change in senior engineering personnel
- reliance on other peoples design
What should have occured at Hyatt Regency
- design detail shown on engineer’s drawing
- fabricators connection design detailed on shop drawings
- absence of properly designed connection noted during checks
- EOR should have been hired for inspection
- EOR could have disclaimed responsibility
Lessons Learned from Hyatt Regency
- personnel transitions create a risk of error creeping in
- changes in concept should be handled through a formal process not over the phone
Lessons not Learned from Hyatt Regency
- impacts of structural failure too great for success to be defined through a low bid process
- city building departments can’t provide adequate checking
- structural engineers cannot let lawyers define good engineering practice, case-by-case, after the fact
General Causes of Failure
- Aims
- Organisation
- Methods
- People
Aims Causes of Failure
- goal failure
- requirement failure
- unrealistic
Organisational Causes of Failure
- resource failure
- size failure
- organisational failure
- methodology
- planning/control
Methods Causes of Failure
- technique failure
- technology failure
People Causes of Failure
- people management
- personality failure
- wrong people
- user needs
Swiss Cheese Model
- James Reason, 1990
- popular for training and investigations
- suggests putting up more barriers, with fewer holes
latent failure
prior failure lying “dormant”
active failure
occured at the time of failure
Levels of Human Error
- Skill-Based
- Rule-based
- Knowledge-Based
Skill-Based Errors
action slips/lapses
- basic skills and tasks learnt by practice/training
- sub-conscious patterns of behaviour
- usually due to inattention or overattention
- usually quick to identify or rectify
Knowledge-Based Errors
- dealing with unfamiliar/novel situations
- often most crucial to major failures
- ultimately problems of complexity/diagnosis
Rule-Based Errors
mistakes
- patterns for dealing with familiar scenarios
- applying a strong but wrong rule
- ignoring later counter-indicators
- overload
- training can improve rule-based skills
Reduction of Errors
- Error Detection and Removal
2. Error Prevention
Error Detection and Removal
- slips are easiest to detect (often by oneself)
- requires some discrepancy between expected and observed
- “fresh pair of eyes”
Error Prevention
- training and practice
- right environment
- simulators
- good design
- checklists
- standardisation
- humans will still make mistakes and lapses