18th November 2016
By: Megan LeNoir
Applying Lessons learned, what does it mean? As the question suggests it is learning from incidents to prevent the same or similar incidents from happening again.
Everyday throughout Australia and the world in fact, a high number of workers die and a much greater number are seriously injured. The harms to workers, the costs to healthcare systems and the damages to communities are immense.
Yet many of these injuries and deaths could have been prevented by applying the lessons learned from project to project, company to company and even industry to industry.
These lessons can be used to create far more effective approaches that not only protect workers but also reduce the harms to society.
By reviewing lessons learned from different projects, companies etc, workers can analyse the information and apply these lessons to their own workplaces to make their workplaces healthier and safer.
Based on our experience we have seen a few companies take incidents that have occurred on one project and used them as toolbox topics, safety alerts or even made changes to the way activities are conducted or the use of different equipment based on those lessons learned.
But we don’t see it enough!
The other area that we find isn’t tapped into enough is ‘Prevention through design’. We see time after time, especially in construction, that the workers safety and health, from ‘cradle to the grave’ processes we are not taking on lessons learned.
It is important to note that each lesson offers stories and examples that could be used to our advantage when it comes to worker safety and health.
Does your company have a corporate knowledge base system that enables you to apply those lessons learned from project to project and task to task?