Safety Culture : Assessing and Changing the Behaviour of Organisations

Facility safety is an important commercial risk and it has to be managed insists John Taylor in Safety Culture. Following an accident, the lack of a 'good' safety management system, compounded by a 'poor' safety culture, is a charge often laid on organisations. Accidents can take up to thirty percentage points off annual profits and, often, failure to manage safety has a much larger social cost that can involve fatalities or serious injury to members of the workforce and public. This has been starkly demonstrated in the railway industry, the international atomic energy industry, and through events in the oil exploration and refinery industry. In business terms, the ultimate cost can be receivership.

Safety Culture highlights examples ranging from the loss of the Titanic, to Bhopal, and the Tokaimura criticality event. In it Dr Taylor argues that to minimise risks, any hazardous facility requires robustly engineered safety systems, an effective management system and a developed organisational safety culture. Safety culture is a complex social/scientific concept and Dr Taylor demystifies it with reference to theory normally associated with mainstream business development and change processes. Sections of the book deal with using safety culture theory as a predictive model, the assessment of safety culture, and how to influence culture change to produce the desired organisational behaviours.

This is a practically focused book from an author with vast experience at the top level of high hazard industries, he brings together current academic thinking on the concept of safety culture and provides authoritative practical guidance for operational executives, managers and for students in science, safety technology and engineering disciplines.

Dr John Taylor lectured in Physics before embarking on a career in the commercial nuclear power plant industry. During his career has worked on nuclear reactor physics design for marine plant, safety in design of commercial reactors and the safe design of all facets of nuclear fuel cycle facilities. Here he gained experience of safety assessment, accident consequence analysis and nuclear facility safety cases production methods eventually becoming an independent reviewer of safety submissions. Later, as a senior corporate manger for a leading UK Company, he was closely involved with the Corporate regulatory interface addressing safety assessment methods and analysis. In pursuing a strong belief in the need for senior level ownership of safety management Dr. Taylor engaged the senior team in safety culture theory, human factors and human behaviour, and the independent review of safety culture on operational sites. He worked in the UK and periodically overseas, particularly in the USA and South Africa. John Taylor continues to consult, particularly in nuclear, radiological, conventional safety and the development of safety management systems. He lectures extensively in safety, criticality, radiation physics and safety culture and works closely with university, industrial and overseas agencies as an authority on the theory and practice of safety culture. He has carried out safety culture missions independently in South Africa and with the International Atomic Energy Agency in Austria, Russia, China, South Korea, Ghana and Bulgaria. John has degrees in physics, applied nuclear science and economics.