Huaa…When Local Learning and Casual Sharing Is Not Enough

As a consequence of the Deepwater Horizon blowout and explosion, Bhopal and Piper Alpha, we have the PSM standard and SEMS rule. This helps ensure companies, at a minimum, document incidents of consequence.  Most organizations take this further and conduct root cause analysis, document lessons learned and create corrective action.  Even if there are lessons learned, collected at a local level, large companies struggle to spread learnings across the organization.  Even when they share in a passive manner, organizational value is not always realized.  When sharing is not enough to ensure we don't repeat missteps organizationally, you need a process like HUAA (Heard, Understood, Acknowledged and Actioned).  Holding sr. managers accountable is the only way to ensure that painful learnings are leveraged for improved process safety performance.