There is a reason that many workplace safety incidents are often called “accidents.” However, if we take a step back, what is inherent in the word “accident”? I it possible that we are using the word wrong, or if we are, is there a way that we can act proactively to mitigate the use of the word, as well as the act?

[Image courtesy of Stuart Cole from Flickr via a Creative Commons license]In your “risk factory,” known as a worksite, you ave an obligation to prevent event called “accidents.” A recent ASSE podcast discusses a concept of embedding prevention into projects proactively to mitigate incident risk even before a project is begun.

When a child drops a glass onto the floor and it shatters, he or she will often say, “I’m sorry! It was an accident!” before they stand there, paralyzed, with tears of fear running down their faces hoping they aren’t going to get in trouble. Reassuringly, we parents will say, “It’s OK, I know it was an accident. You didn’t mean to do it.” We all get that “accidents” are unintentional. We know that no one really intends to break their arm in a fall on a worksite (unless he or she is already a disgruntled employee; in that case, you probably should have had riddance before the arm broke. But I digress.)

We all think of accidents as unintentional, but do we also think of them as something we could not have foreseen or had no control over it happening? Can something that was unintentional, but preventable, be considered an “accident”? Is it possible that  we could set up our worksites so that  the word “accident” can be used for fewer and fewer incidents because we were able to proactively prevent  many of these unintentional but preventable acts from happening?

The concept is called Prevention Through Design (PTD) and it comes from a book by Dave Walline called “Prevention Through Design: Proven Solutions From the Field.” Walline was recently featured in an ASSE podcast series called “Safety Speaks,” and in it he talks more about what PTD is and how thinking about it and acting on it can transform our profession as safety officers.

In his book and the podcast, Walline discusses the concept of PTD and how it can be easy to grasp as a concept for safety professionals and it looks good on paper, but often it is someting that is hard to execute on the worksite – especially without buy-in from supervisors, managers and administrators. PTD involves injecting safety and preventive measures into projects before they are executed, rather than cleaning up the mess after something happens. Again, for some of us this seems fairly easy to understand, but implementing the concept is a more difficult task than the theory behind it.

If you’d like to learn more, you can check out the Safety Speaks podcast at www.asse.org/multimedia and search for Dave Walline or Prevention Through Desig t learn more about how to design the prevention of these accidents – and other incidents.