Safety measurement problem revisited: key challenges in developing safety performance indicators

Safety performance indicators have for long been recognised as inescapable tools of process safety performances evaluation. The richness and variety of both academic and professional literature (OECD, 2008), (CCPS, 2010), (Cefic, 2011) demonstrate this fact. Still, this long history leaves a large set of challenges unanswered when it comes to how indicators should be designed and used for process safety performance assessment. Actually, a large part of the debate is currently occupied by two major issues being firstly the distinction between leading and lagging indicators and secondly the distinction between process and occupational safety indicators. Without denying the relevance of these two topics, this work investigates two other challenges that we believe highly relevant given the issue of safety performance assessment. The first issue relates to the often neglected and dismissed role of indicators as promoters and vehicles of safety values within the organisation. Actually, we claim that indicators are not only meant for bottom up collection of information on how objectives are achieved, they are also a top down information the workforce interprets in order to build its perceptions of what the management thinks is important when it comes to safety. Better understanding this mechanism is a key step in the path of ensuring acceptance of safety indicators and commitment in providing data that are required for their use. The second issue focuses on the need to ensure that safety performance indicators are put at the service of the organisation’s safety model. If the safety models defines what the organisations believes as means for controlling risks and achieving safety performance, it is crucial that indicators serve the wondering of whether this model is relevant for the organisation and put in practice by the various levels of management and workforce. This work aspires to raise awarness within the scientific and professional community on these issues to hopefully improve the relevance and added value of safety performance evaluation systems