Deep Water Horizon Oil Spill

In safety, like in many careers, you are expected to perform a certain task with a fairly high level of efficiency. In other words, you have to have some sort of measurable worth to your company to show them that your employment is important to them. It is important to show that you are a valuable asset obviously. Unfortunately, in safety, if you are doing your job correctly then it is hard to show that measurable value. Let’s say, when your company only has 5 incidents last year, that’s all they tend to see. Not the fact that there would have been 20, therefore you actually saved them 15 incidents or had an efficiency of 80%. So, the big question is, how do you keep your company involved and interested when they see no measurable worth? Especially
As you get closer to the top decision-maker in your organization the more readily you see, and hopefully appreciate, the fact that cost justification for every aspect of business is the name of the game. After all, if your program costs them more money in the long run, then what’s the point? They would just assume the risk and move on. And why wouldn’t they, they are a for-profit business. Its only after an accident happens that they look to safety to save them money. British Petroleum’s Deep Water Horizon oil spill is a prime example. A friend of mine actually worked for BP as a fire protection supervisor leading up to this accident. He told me that on an inspection of that rig a year earlier, he recommended 3 million dollars in upgrades. Of course, they didn’t feel like it was worth it. As of February 2013, criminal and civil settlements and payments had cost the company $42.2 billion. Would you say they probably regret not spending the 3 million dollars for upgrades? I’d say that they are. But, everyday companies make gambles like these. Some turn out alright, and some turn out like Deepwater Horizons. Hind sight is 20/20 as they say and it’s up to us to sway the company to make a smarter
Looking at how someone else does it is a good start. Joseph Dear, the head of OSHA, gives us many fine examples on cost-justifying safety and health programs. He has to sell this message before Congress all the time. Mr. Dear is competing for limited resources just like us and as you could imagine, senators aren’t the easiest people to sell an idea to. For some motivation you can read Dear’s speeches and Congressional testimony on OSHA’s Home Page online. Statistics and dollars, just as we practiced in class, are played up in almost every one of his speeches. So are success stories. How many statistics or metrics have you gathered for your safety and health program? Can you attach dollars to these statistics? And don’t be shy about flaunting successes. They may seem to you to be simply part of doing your job, but they’re more than that. They’re bits of proof that what you’re doing has