Tactic changes the way workers think about situations and surroundings: Consultant
Guy Chenard has a new way of thinking about safety and says the best example of his new thought process is when a group of workers was doing everything right — almost.
The senior health and safety advisor at Ontario Power Generation (OPG) remembers when three workers went out to a worksite to repair a broken fan.
“They planned the job, they had the tools,” he says. “They had work protection and did everything they needed to.”
As the group worked together to fix the fan, a four foot icicle came crashing down from above, nearly hitting the workers.
The workers did a good job of preparing to complete a job safely, but they failed to assess how their environment could change while completing the job.
“We were focusing on the fan,” he says. “We didn't consider that there were other hazards around there.”
What the workers were lacking was situational awareness, Chenard says.
“In a nutshell, situational awareness is a state of mind where you're constantly reviewing and keeping in mind what's happening around you at work,” he says.
Situational awareness isn’t a new concept. The term can be traced as far back as the First World War, where it was recognized as a concept for American crews in military aircraft. Pilots were trained to observe the enemy's current behaviour and anticipate the next move.
As pilots returned home from war, the concept began to be adopted in aviation, according to Rich Gasaway, founder of the Center for the Advancement of Situational Awareness and Decision-making, based in St. Paul, Minn.
“It doesn't surprise me because a lot of pilots come from a military background, so they got introduced to situational awareness in the military and then transitioned into aviation,” he says.
Gasaway, a former fire chief, now trains first responders on the concept.
“First responders are not being trained to the levels that they need to be on situational awareness mostly because instructors don't understand enough about it themselves,” he says. “I don't blame them. It took me seven years to understand it on a level that I think I am now able to teach it.”
The most widely accepted definition of situational awareness was established by Mica Endsley, considered the situational awareness guru by both Chenard and Gasaway.
Situational awareness is “the perception of elements in the environment within a volume of time and space, the comprehension of their meaning, and the projection of their status in the near future,” Endsley writes.
Gasaway and Chenard teach the three levels of situational awareness developed by Endsley:
1. Perceive critical factors in the environment.
2. Understand the meaning of those factors, especially when integrated together in relation to the operator's goals.
3. Understand what will happen with the system in the near future.
But Gasaway simplifies the definition for his students:
“It's the action of capturing the clues and the cues in your environment and then taking those clues and cues and putting them together like a piece of a puzzle and forming a picture of what is happening in your environment around you and then being able to — and this is probably the most important part of situational awareness — being able to predict the future,” he says.
Workers need to broaden their view of the influences affecting the job being worked on, Chenard says.
“In the past, people would plan their jobs, they would do it, but because they were so task-oriented, they forgot other hazards around them,” he says.
Besides identifying job hazards based on previous experience completing similar tasks or being in a similar location, workers need to conduct visual assessments of the actual working conditions before beginning any new work.
This includes observing the weather, acknowledging people near the worksite, observing the area around the worksite and predicting the likelihood of something going awry.
It can be a difficult strategy for some people to adopt because they’re so used to repetitively completing tasks, says Gasaway.
“They start to lose sight of the fact there are things around them that could hurt and kill them,” he says. “That's where we are a lot when we're driving. You become complacent because if you drive for 15 years and never have an accident, you start to think, ‘Wow, I'm really good at this.’”
Chenard compares learning situational awareness to a drivers’ education course.
“They always tell you, you should always look at your gauges, look at your mirrors, so that it becomes sort of a given task,” he says. “I think situational awareness is the same thing — it's making sure that you understand and that you're constantly being vigilant and looking at what's happening all around.”
Since implementing situational awareness in the safety training at OPG more than two years ago, Chenard has received a lot of positive feedback.
“We had one supervisor say we should have been doing this years ago because it's easy for you to miss stuff in the workplace when you’re not thinking about it,” he says. “It's not new. It's just a component of the risk assessment management that we failed to manage over the years.”
Gasaway is pleased to see the concept being adopted in industries beyond EMS workers. Many of his seminars are attended by volunteers and he is often given feedback that the training applies to their day-job more than their volunteer work.
“I've heard this from people who are train engineers, airline pilots, factory workers, school teachers. The concept truly is universal,” he says. “It's applicable right down to the mom with a car full of kids driving them to soccer practice.”
Different than being cautious?
Being cautious is a part of situational awareness, according to Gasaway. People often try to be careful, but sometimes that’s not enough.
“Being cautious is important if you know what to be cautious about,” he says. “If we all went through life being cautious with strong situational awareness, there would never be car wrecks and there would never be falls and there would never be injuries because caution would keep people safe, but sometimes people lose sight of what being cautious means.”
Situational awareness is really retraining the way you think, he says.
“It's about knowing what to be cautious about, what are the cues and clues that indicate that something is about to happen?”
