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Part 4 of 7 · Safety incident logger series ~5 min read

How safety actions get tracked

This is the part that separates a safety system from a filing system. A report being dealt with and a hazard being fixed are different events, they happen at different times, and a system with one status field for both will show green while the pallets are still stacked too high.

Key takeaways

  • A report is reviewed. An action is completed. Two objects, two states.
  • An action has one owner, one date, and one sentence describing the change.
  • A report can be closed with open actions, and the actions keep chasing.
  • An overdue action escalates upward, unlike most chasing in this series.
  • An action closed without a change described is refused.

Two objects

How safety actions are created and tracked separately from reportsA vertical chain of five steps entered by a box labelled A confirmed report, with its severity set. Step one is Review it, where a person reads it. Step two asks whether there are any actions, zero or more; none exits to Close the report, because there is nothing to change. Step three creates each action with an owner, a date and a described change, written to a separate actions table. Step four closes the report, even with actions still open. Step five chases the actions independently and upward. A note says closing the report does not close the actions, and that separation is the whole point.AWS ACCOUNTA confirmed reportseverity setReview ita person reads itAny actions?zero or moreClose the reportnothing to changenoneCreate each actionowner, date, changeActions tableseparate objectClose the reporteven with actions openChase the actionsindependently, upwardClosing the report does not close the actions. That separation is the whole point.
Fig 1. How a report becomes actions. The report closes when somebody has dealt with it; the actions close when the world has changed, and those are rarely the same day.
  • Database
  • App integration
  • Machine learning
  • Management
  • Front-end & mobile
  • People

Why a report can close with actions open

Because they measure different things. “Has somebody looked at this and decided what to do?” should be answered within a day or two, and a queue of unreviewed reports is a genuine problem. “Has the thing been fixed?” might reasonably take three weeks if it involves ordering racking.

A single status makes one of those two numbers meaningless. Either reports stay open for weeks and the review backlog is invisible, or they close on review and the outstanding hazards are invisible. Two objects, two counts, and both are visible.

What an action requires

  • One owner, a person. Not a team and not a role. An action owned by “maintenance” is owned by nobody, and it will still be open in November.
  • One date. When it will be done, set by the owner or by whoever created it and agreed. A date that has been moved twice is itself a signal.
  • One sentence describing the change. “Restack pallets and mark a maximum height by the roller door” — not “review stacking”. An action that cannot be described as a change is not an action, it is an intention.
  • Nothing else. No priority field, no percentage complete, no sub-tasks. This is not a project tracker and every field added makes an action less likely to be created.

Closing an action

One tap, and a required sentence: what changed. “Restacked to two high, floor marked, supervisor briefed.” The sentence is required and the tap alone is refused, for a specific reason: an action closed with no description is indistinguishable from an action closed to clear a list, and six months later nobody can tell which happened.

Escalating upward

Almost every chase in this series escalates sideways or stops. This one escalates upward, and it is the one place that is right, because an overdue safety action is exactly the situation where somebody with more authority needs to know.

How an overdue safety action escalatesA horizontal row of five boxes. Due date: the owner is reminded. Plus seven days: their manager is told. Plus twenty-one days: the safety lead. Plus forty-five days: whoever runs the business. Never expires: until the change is described. A note says this is the only alert in this series besides a lapsed certification that never rests.AN OVERDUE ACTION GETS LOUDERDue dateowner reminded+7 daystheir manager+21 daysthe safety lead+45 dayswhoever runs the businessNever expiresuntil the change is describedThe only alert in this series besides a lapsed certification that never rests.
Fig 2. The escalation ladder for an overdue safety action. Like a lapsed certification, it never stops, because the underlying situation does not improve on its own.
  • App integration
  • Security & identity
  • Management
  • People

The forty-five-day step is deliberately uncomfortable and it is rarely reached. Its existence is most of its value: an action that has been open for six weeks is going to be discussed by somebody who can allocate money to it, and everybody in the chain knows that from the day it was created.

Next: what the counting finds.

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