PROGRAM MANAGEMENT

Peer-Reviewed

Safety & Health

TERMINOLOGY
MANAGEMENT By Herman Woessner

I
IN THROUGH THE LOOKING-GLASS, Lewis Carroll (1872/1991) wrote:
“When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said, in rather
a scornful tone, “it means just what I choose it to
mean—neither more nor less.”
“The question is,” said Alice, “whether you can
make words mean so many different things.”
“The question is,” said Humpty Dumpty, “which is
to be master—that’s all.”
This article analyzes the reasons for mastering (i.e., system-
controlling terms and their specialized meanings. The process
applied to an organization’s occupational safety and health con-
cepts comprises its safety terminology management program.
Such a program is an essential, yet largely neglected, element
of most safety management systems. Since safety and health
terms are used daily and in numerous organizational docu-
ments, many safety leaders simply assume that their meanings
are self-evident and are clearly understood by the workforce.
Few leaders recognize the need to verify these assumptions,
much less incorporate a safety terminology management pro-
atically managing) an organization’s safety and health concepts gram into their organization’s safety management system.
and terms, and describes how it is to be accomplished. An organization’s specialized terms convey particular import
For brevity and readability, the term “occupational safety and context for its safety culture and safety management sys-
and health” has been shortened to simply “safety.” Thus, “safety tem. No system (natural or created) can function effectively if
management program” is used for “occupational health and its operating principles are confounded by unclear, inconsistent
safety program,” and “safety management system” is used for or mixed signals. The U.S. response to the COVID-19 pandemic
“occupational safety and health management system.” is an example of how the conceptual noise from mixed signals
can cause misperceptions and mistrust, leading to unwanted
Safety Terminology Management
and unhealthy behaviors.
All professions and organizations use specialized words and
To ensure that safety terminology remains free of conceptual
expressions to communicate conceptual meaning and con-
noise, organizational leaders must devote the necessary attention
text to stakeholders. These specialized designations are called
and resources to plan, develop and control relevant performance
terms. Terminology is the word designation for the collection
standards and measures, as they do for other safety and health
and study of terms. Terminology management is the process
programs. Without such standards and measures, misunderstand-
of identifying, evaluating, organizing, communicating, and
ings, miscommunications and misalignments inevitably result, for
what is not measured cannot be effectively controlled, and what is
KEY TAKEAWAYS not standardized will not be consistently implemented.
•The concepts encapsulated in terms that organizations use to
convey their safety and health values and systems can be con-
A safety program is a subsystem within an organization’s
safety management system. It provides guidance for the estab-
founded, misunderstood and misapplied by conceptual noise from lishment of one or more processes or procedures for the sys-
different sources. Conceptual noise is the ambiguity resulting from tematic management of a particular risk, operation or function,
unclear, inconsistent, competing, or contradictory verbal and writ- as well as for technical and administrative support. Examples
LAYLABIRD/E+/GETTY IMAGES

ten communications. of different kinds of safety and health programs may include
• Organizations need to systematically identify, eliminate or
control such conceptual noise sources to ensure workforce under-
biological hazard control, engineering design safety, lockout/
tagout, safety performance accountability and job safety analy-
standing, acceptance and usage. sis. These programs and many others, together with an organi-
• A safety terminology management program is the management
system for achieving these objectives.
zation’s mission, policy and responsibility statements, comprise
the core elements of its safety management system.

18 PSJ PROFESSIONAL SAFETY FEBRUARY 2022 assp.org

 Program effectiveness requires design clarity, consistency ignorance.” News and social media outlets frequently use the
and completeness, for which standardization of terms, format term “freak accident” to describe a highly unusual event that
and structure are prerequisite. is harmful or potentially harmful. If the causes of accidents
are unforeseen, unfortunate or highly unusual, the logical in-
ANSI/ASSP/ISO 45001-2018 Standard ference is that they cannot be anticipated or prevented. And if
The ANSI/ASSP/ISO 45001-2018 international consensus stan- they result from human carelessness or ignorance, the practical
dard provides requirements and guidance for the establishment control measures are limited to training and discipline.
of an occupational health and safety management system. The Few safety professionals subscribe to such beliefs. Indeed,
standard defines an occupational health and safety management most train employees to anticipate, recognize and control
system as the “set of interrelated or interacting elements of an workplace hazards for the prevention of foreseeable accidents.
organization to establish policies, objectives and processes to Safety professionals generally rank training toward the lower
achieve [occupational health and safety] objectives” (p. 3). end of the hazard control hierarchy for long-term effectiveness
The standard includes system specifications, management because its efficacy inevitably declines over time, so the need
requirements, performance guidance and recommendations for refresher training is constant. For the same reasons and
for continual system improvements through implementation because of the negativity that can result from discipline, safety
of the plan-do-check-act cycle. In addition, it provides defini- professionals generally relegate it to the bottom of the effec-
tions of terms, clarifications of selected concepts, references to tiveness hierarchy. Moreover, they understand worker training
safety terminology databases, and a source for common terms and discipline are ineffective safeguards against hazards such
and core definitions used by the International Organization for as faulty engineering designs, machinery and material failures,
Standardization (ISO) for management system standards. bad management decisions/indecisions, inconsistent communi-
The standard developers clearly recognized the importance of cations and organizational misalignments.
defining key terms and concepts to ensure effective occupational
health and safety management system communications. Al-
though the standard does not specifically call for the creation of a
Complexity & Variance
“Hazard,” “risk” and “safe” are term designations for interre-
safety terminology management program, Section 7.4 requires or-
lated concepts that are central to an understanding of accident
ganizations to “establish, implement and maintain the process(es)
causation and prevention. Their definitions, however, can be
needed for the internal and external communications relevant to
sources of confusion rather than clarity, as their meanings often
the [occupational health and safety] management system” (p. 15).
vary among employers, professions and employees, including
In addition, organizations are required to “ensure that [occu-
publishers of dictionaries and glossaries. The reason for the vari-
pational health and safety] information to be communicated is
ations likely stems from the abstraction and generalization re-
consistent with information generated within the [occupational
quired to define the expansive universe of conditions, behaviors
health and safety] management system, and is reliable” (p. 16).
and circumstances they encompass. Abstracted and generalized
Sources of Conceptual Noise definitions can be ambiguous to untrained readers. ANSI/ASSP/
Eliminating work-related hazards and minimizing at-risk ISO 45001 defines “hazard” as a “source with a potential to cause
exposures are key values and objectives for every employer. injury and ill health” (p. 5) and “risk” as “effect of uncertainty”
Terms such as “safe,” “hazard,” “risk,” “accident” and others are (p. 5). Several notes are needed below the definitions to clarify
conceptual designations critical for effective communication their meanings. In addition, the standard makers found it nec-
of these and other interrelated concepts and values. The con- essary to define the term “occupational health and safety risk,”
ceptual noise sources described in this section exemplify how however, the definition is completely different, although more
workforce misunderstandings and misperceptions can arise to conventional, than “effect of uncertainty.” The standard’s defini-
obstruct applications of safety and health concepts. tion of “occupational health and safety risk” is “combination of
the likelihood of occurrence of a work-related hazardous event(s)
Competition & Conflict or exposure(s) and the severity of injury and ill health . . . that
Many occupational safety and health terms are familiar to the can be caused by the event(s) or exposure(s)” (p. 5).
general public from personal use outside of the workplace and If trained professionals struggle to explain the meanings of
from media reports, nontechnical dictionaries and even other pro- core safety and health terms that they routinely use, imagine
fessions, particularly the medical and military professions. Unless how likely it would be for untrained employees who are not
carefully managed, connotations derived from these sources can safety specialists to be confused about them, especially those
subtly vary from an organization’s intended meanings. Such vari- with literacy and language difficulties. Many more factors can
ations can compete and conflate in the minds of employees, blur- influence employee perceptions and behavior in response to an
ring the meanings of an organization’s specialized terms. employer’s use of the term “risk” in its communications and
The term “accident” is a prime example of a familiar safety-­ policies. Ropeik (2010) describes 13 risk perception factors that
related concept whose generic definition can confound an or- research has shown influence human behavior in response to
ganization’s safety communications and training. Perhaps, the risk information. These factors are universal, but the degree of
generally understood meanings and misuses of the term ac- their influence depends largely on an individual’s unique expe-
count for the paucity of its usage in the ANSI/ASSP/ISO 45001. rience, education and lifestyle.
The standard only refers to the term “accident” in a note that Trust in the risk communicator and risk communications
states “An incident where injury and ill health occurs is some- is a key factor that can overcome the background noise every
times referred to as an ‘accident’” (p. 7). employee brings to the workplace and can positively influence
The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines “accident” as “an workforce risk perceptions and behaviors. Securing the trust of
unforeseen and unplanned event or circumstance” and as “an employees is a critical requirement for establishing an effective
unfortunate event resulting especially from carelessness or safety management system and its subsystems.

assp.org FEBRUARY 2022 PROFESSIONAL SAFETY PSJ 19

 ANSI/ASSP/ISO 45001 does not include a definition for the The following key rules regarding abbreviations should be
term “safe.” It refers readers to ISO’s terminological database established in an organization’s safety management terminolo-
for use in standardization, where “safe” is defined as “capacity gy program:
to be used at an acceptable level of risk of harm” (ISO, n.d.). It is •Minimize abbreviation usage.
obvious that without guidance and context, the meaning of this •Explain unfamiliar abbreviations.
familiar term is open to misinterpretation and misapplication. •Avoid nonstandard abbreviations and internet slang.
For example, for many years tower-industry safety practi- •Write the full expression for acronyms on first use and
tioners and experienced climbers considered it safe and the whenever practical thereafter.
industry standard to free-climb high towers. And, for decades, •Write acronyms in uppercase.
safety practitioners and linemen in the electric utility industry •On initial use, place an acronym in parentheses next to the
considered it safe to work on de-energized equipment without word or phrase it represents.
personally locking and tagging it out. In fact, in the author’s ex- •Define relevant abbreviations in the safety terminology manage-
perience, industry representatives strongly opposed the person- ment program’s glossary of safety and health terms and definitions.
al lockout/tagout requirements of OSHA’s control of hazardous
energy standard. De-energized work was typically performed JSA & JHA
under one supervisor, coworker or group tag. JSA and JHA are synonymous acronyms for job safety analy-
sis and job hazard analysis, a multistep process widely utilized
Literacy & Languages across industry and at all levels of government. This section
Different languages and levels of literacy within an organiza- uses the JSA acronym.
tion can inhibit understanding of the meanings and context of The process was introduced in the early 20th century to
safety and health terms and communications. This is the reason quickly train inexperienced industrial workers to safely per-
OSHA requires employers to ensure that safety materials and form assigned work tasks. It may be supervisor guided or em-
communications are presented in a language and manner that ployee led, and involves use of a form to guide and record the
employees can comprehend. following steps:
However, these objectives cannot be casually accomplished, 1. work-task selection
much less sustained over the long term. They require systematic 2. identification of the main steps of a work task sequence
planning, organization, communication and oversight. Every 3. analysis of each step to anticipate and identify inherent hazards
safety terminology management program should include a plan- 4. development of appropriate hazard control measures
do-check-act process to accomplish the following objectives: 5. use of the completed JSA form to instruct and retrain af-
•Identify employees for whom English is not their primary fected employees
language and all primary languages spoken or read by the Hazard, at-risk and risk are the key concepts encapsulated
workforce. in the process of which supervisors and workers must share a
•Assess employee literacy levels and instruction requirements. common understanding. Risk, because work tasks with a high
•Procure qualified trainers, translators and training materials. probability and a higher severity potential are prioritized for
•Evaluate the quality and consistency of safety and health selection and analysis before lower risk and lower consequence
training and communications. tasks. At-risk, because a hazard can only cause harm if some-
•Locate and correct misinterpreted and misused safety concepts. one or something of value is exposed or at-risk to it. And haz-
Unfortunately, many organizations fail to appreciate the ard, of course, because it is the source of potential harm, and its
benefits of such a systematic approach when compared to the control is the objective of the JSA process.
investment costs. Instead, they typically choose coworkers as Unfortunately, as noted, risk can be an ambiguous concept to
translators and instructors, and often fail to teach them the many, as can its derivative, at-risk; what constitutes a hazardous
meanings of the organization’s specialized safety and health exposure, for example, is open to interpretation.
concepts or train them in the use of appropriate instructional The term that most often creates conceptual noise in the
methods, materials and equipment. They also fail to regularly performance of a JSA is “hazard.” In professional research per-
evaluate trainer performance and training outcomes. The con- sonally conducted over 5 decades spanning 43 North American
ceptual noise accompanying such failures is usually revealed Industry Classification System industries, it became evident that
only by accident, often literally. the term is imprecisely defined and commonly misunderstood
to the detriment of process effectiveness. This research involved
Abbreviations & Acronyms observation of JSA training sessions, audits of worker and
Abbreviations shorten complex words and expressions, and supervisor-­led work task analyses, personnel interviews, evalua-
allow for more concise verbal and written communications. tion of completed JSA forms, comparison of dictionary and glos-
Acronyms constitute a class of abbreviations commonly used sary definitions, and surveys of professional online instructions.
to simplify technical and specialized communications. They OSHA’s booklet “Job Hazard Analysis,” is illustrative of a com-
comprise two distinct groups: one group is formed from the mon finding. It defines a hazard as “the potential for harm” (p. 1),
phrase for which the acronym stands and is pronounced as a which is a current and common definition for the term. A slip,
word (e.g., OSHA, MSHA, FEMA, NASA); the second group is trip, fall, burn, electrocution, vehicle crash and many other such
composed of and pronounced as individual letters (e.g., DOT, terms have the potential to cause harm, so they would fall under
EPA, DNA, CPR). Because acronyms are truncated expressions, the definition. However, they are not task-specific hazards, they
the meaning of their underlying concepts can be ambiguous, are hazard types or accident consequences. Other such “hazards”
if not obscure, to the uninitiated. Thus, their use in verbal and found on JSA forms include struck-by, struck-against, inhalation,
written communications should be carefully managed to mini- high-noise, ergonomic and fire. The term “fire” can designate a
mize conceptual noise. hazard, a type of hazard and the consequence of a hazard.

20 PSJ PROFESSIONAL SAFETY FEBRUARY 2022 assp.org

EXAMPLE WRITTEN SAFETY & HEALTH TERMINOLOGY MANAGEMENT PROGRAM
I. Program Purpose formation and oversight of the divi- F. Control training records to identify any
The purpose of this program sion’s Safety and Health Terminolo- The team shall utilize the plan, do, discrepancies with program re-
is to establish requirements and gy Management Program (STMP). check, act quality sustainability cycle quirements and term usage.
guidelines for the systematic iden- The leader shall be responsible to ensure that program content and •The safety and health depart-
tification, organization, evalua- for forming a cross-functional implementation remain current and ment shall follow up with the
tion, testing, communication and team whose members shall have consistent. This process would require affected parties to ensure timely
control of XYZ’s safety and health the requisite technical and orga- the revision of all safety and health correction of any discrepancies
terms and concepts. nizational knowledge and expe- documents with inconsistent, inac- and shall forward the information
rience to competently plan and curate or unclear safety and health to the organization’s STMP team.
II. Program Objectives implement the following phases: terms and conceptual definitions. •The team shall aggregate the
The objectives of the program are: findings with those of other re-
•Establish conformance with A. Identification VI. Responsibilities porting organizations to identify
the intent and requirements set All safety and health related •Every employee is responsible any discrepancy trends that may
forth in the XYZ organization’s policies, plans, procedures, for understanding the meaning of require executive action to correct.
Five Ps Standard. protocols, training materials, safety and health terms and defi-
•Establish consistent expression communications and instructions nitions used in the organization’s X. Recordkeeping
of clear, concise and approved safe- shall be reviewed to identify their safety management system and All reports, records and
ty and health terms and concepts. safety and health terms and con- listed in the program’s glossary. documented communications
•Enhance workforce under- ceptual definitions. •Executive officers, managers and pertaining to the STMP shall be
standing and usability of safety The identified terms and defi- supervisors are responsible for regu- forwarded to the STMP team
and health concepts and terms. nitions shall be compared against larly training and monitoring subor- leader to be kept on file for a
•Create a Glossary of Safety and and harmonized with the same or dinates to understand and properly minimum of 2 years.
Health Terms and Definitions. equivalent terms and definitions apply the organization’s safety and
•Establish timely and sustainable published by the International health terms and definitions. XI. Glossary of Safety &
control over the quality of program Organization for Standardiza- •All of the corporation’s national Health Terms & Definitions
content, application and efficacy. tion and recognized standards-­ and international organizations and Terms and definitions should be
making organizations in each of operating units are responsible for arranged in alphabetical order and
III. References the countries within which the adopting or adapting the require- digitized to allow for sorting into
Reference materials used in the company operates. ments and guidance of this program. logical arrangements of their in-
preparation of this program are: terrelationships. The following are
•Standard for Policy, Plan, B. Organization VII. Audits not ISO, ANSI or ASSP approved
Program, Procedure and Protocol The STMP team shall orga- •The STMP team in each orga- definitions and explanations. They
Development (XYZ organization’s nize the harmonized terms and nizational division shall annually are arranged to illustrate their
Five Ps Standard) conceptual definitions in alpha- audit the content and implemen- conceptual connections.
•ANSI/ASSP/ISO 45001-2018, betical order forming a glossary tation of its STMP to identify, re- Accident: An unplanned and
Occupational Health and Safety of safety and health terms and port and correct any discrepancies unwanted event with the potential
Management Systems—Require- definitions. or misunderstandings. to cause a loss resulting from con-
ments With Guidance for Use C. Evaluation •Department managers are to tact with one or more hazards.
•Dictionary of Terms Used in Each term and conceptual conduct such audits in their areas Mishap: An unplanned and un-
the Safety Profession, 4th edition, definition shall be analyzed and of their responsibility every 6 wanted event with the potential to
edited by Richard Lack evaluated for accuracy, consis- months and supervisors shall do so cause a loss resulting from contact
•Enterprise Terminology Manage- tency, clarity and translatability. every quarter. with one more hazard.
ment—Best Practices [video], Kalei- Inaccurate, inconsistent, unclear, •The audit teams shall include Incident: A planned or un-
doscope, YouTube, Aug. 10, 2020 untranslatable terms and defini- trained frontline workers and planned event with the potential
•ISO Online Browsing Platform: tions are to be revised or eliminat- program auditors. to cause a loss occurring from
Terms & Definitions, www.iso.org/obp ed from the glossary. contact with one or more hazards.
VIII. Training An unplanned event with the
IV. Program Terms & Definitions D. Testing •Every employee shall receive potential for loss can be termed
Definitions of key terms used in The team shall survey a repre- initial and refresher training either an accident, incident or
this program include: sentative sample of organizational covering the requirements of the mishap. A planned event with a
•term: word designation for a leaders, managers, supervisors, STMP and its current glossary. loss potential cannot be termed an
concept frontline workers and their repre- •This training shall be conduct- accident or mishap.
•terminology: collection and sentatives to learn which terms and ed for new hires in their orientation Loss: Any injury, illness, prop-
study of terms definitions included in the glossary sessions and for existing employees erty damage, environmental im-
•program: a subsystem are understandable, acceptable in scheduled meetings within 6 pairment, operations disruption,
•system: a network of interre- and translatable, and which need months of program’s approval by brand degradation, legal liability,
lating and interactive elements to be revised, added or removed. the organization’s executive safety regulatory citation or financial
that function in accordance with a The team shall utilize the survey and health committee. cost resulting from an accident,
set of rules findings to finalize the glossary. •Instructor-led or computer-­ mishap or incident.
•plan: a proposed course of The glossary shall be appended to based refresher training shall be Hazard: Any form of matter or
action to accomplish objectives the end of the program. conducted annually thereafter. energy with the potential to cause
a loss.
V. Planned Phases E. Communication IX. Reporting Safe: The condition or state in
In accordance with XYZ organi- In accordance with the Five Ps •All program audit reports and which hazards have been eliminat-
zation’s Five Ps Standard, the Exec- Standard, the final version of the glos- training records shall be forward- ed or effectively controlled.
utive Safety and Health Committee sary shall be presented to the execu- ed to the organization’s safety and Risk: A quality estimate of the
for each of the company’s national tive committee for its understanding health department for evaluation combined probability and severity
and international organizational and approval. The approved program and processing. of a foreseeable loss.
divisions shall select a qualified shall be followed by a communication •The safety and health depart- Energy: The capacity to move
employee or contractor to lead the rollout across the organization. ment shall analyze the audit and and accelerate matter and energy.

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 If not eliminated, the conceptual noise inherent in the term lockout/tagout program was widely misunderstood and often
“hazard” can result (and has resulted) in JSA failure to identify misapplied. Some employees believed the red tag was the main-
specific task-step hazards and their respective hazard control tenance supervisor’s tag, others viewed it as the maintenance
measures. The JSA process aims, as an example, to identify and department’s tag. Only supervisors or their trained designees
control the fire hazard associated with performing an electrical were authorized to apply and remove the supervisor’s tag, while
task, not its generic class or the burn consequences from con- any maintenance worker could remove a department tag upon
tact with it. To overcome this common mistake, some employ- completion of the maintenance job.
ers train workers to recognize the difference between hazards Shortly before the fatal accident, the on-shift maintenance
and their consequences, and include a “consequence” column supervisor, who was one of the victims, was told by workers
on the JSA form for guidance. that they were going to remove their locks and tags from the
Perhaps the most significant research finding is that percep- electrical motor disconnect so that the breaker could be operat-
tions and application of the JSA process have largely remained ed. Why, then, did he and his two companions enter the drum
static over its long history. Its design simplicity and effective a few minutes later without the protection of their own locks
techniques have obscured and limited the potential for adapting and tags? The best explanation identified in the investigation
and generalizing its underlying principles. For example, the con- was that they believed they were protected by a maintenance
cepts utilized in the JSA process can be adapted to identify and department’s red tag that had been applied on the first shift.
analyze hazards inherent in equipment, operations, engineering Unbeknownst to them, someone had removed it—probably at
designs, work plans, management decisions and other activities the end of the earlier shift.
and conditions, but many organizations have not developed In the helicopter accident, two workers were killed. A few
programs to systematically structure and implement such adap- weeks earlier, a near-miss incident involving the transport of a
tations. The static JSA perceptions do not result from sources of tower section occurred on the project with the same pilot. Even
conceptual noise, but rather from sources of “conceptual stasis”: though the incident had the potential for serious injury and
the absence or inactivity of a system signal. In the author’s view, property damage, an in-depth investigation of the incident was
the sources of signal silence are tunnel vision and complacency not conducted. Company policy required a root-cause investi-
based on “if it ain’t broke don’t fix it” thinking. The missing sig- gation only for “high-risk incidents” that incurred or had the
nal would be “think outside of the box and innovate.” potential to incur a loss of $400,000 or more. The board of di-
When not confounded by ambiguous terms and constrained rectors, wishing not to delay completion of the project with an
by traditional perceptions, the JSA process can be adapted unnecessary investigation, rationalized that the potential finan-
to teach and hone critical-thinking skills. Critical thinking cial loss for the near-miss incident did not meet the company’s
involves conceptualizing, analyzing, synthesizing, evaluating loss-threshold for conducting a root-cause investigation.
and applying information. The JSA process trains workers and The board’s decision may have been influenced by the “fram-
their supervisors how to analyze a work task sequence. Crit- ing bias” and fuzzy concepts imbedded in the company’s accident
ical thinking informs them to effectively evaluate analytical investigation policy. The $400,000 loss threshold and the antic-
findings, synthesize their underlying principles and concepts, ipated loss of scheduled project time were the reference points
and generalize their applications to enhance decision-making. through which board members filtered their decision-making
These skills are applicable to every activity, whether it be in the information, the actual high risks inherent in the helicopter
workplace, at home or in the community. Perfecting and build- operations and the possible information gain from a thorough
ing upon them can eventually form an employee mindset that investigation of the near-miss incident notwithstanding.
automatically anticipates what can go wrong in any activity or Tversky and Kahneman (1981) found that people tend to
operation, and recognizes what needs to be done to remain safe. evaluate options in relation to the reference point provided in
This safety mindset is the ultimate objective of a safety man- the proposition statement. In this case, company policy was the
agement system and safety culture. The principles and concepts proposition statement, and the anchor point was the $400,000
inherent in the JSA process can be lead vehicles on the journey loss threshold. The scholars also found that framing a choice in
to achieving this objective. terms of the probable loss rather than the probable gain would
result in more risk taking on average.
Fatal Accidents The term “high-risk incident” also may have been a source
In addition to limiting the effectiveness of accident preven- of conceptual noise confusing the decision-making of some of
tion programs, conceptual noise can be a latent contributing the board members. The term is an oxymoron, for it contains
factor of accidents. This point is illustrated by the following contradictory concepts. “Risk” is the term for a probability es-
analysis of two fatal mishaps. timate of a foreseeable future occurrence, and “incident” is the
In the first, a fatality occurred in 1978 at a specialty chemical term for actualization of a probability estimate. The former is a
complex, where three coworkers died inside of a large rotat- notion about the future, while the latter is a statement about the
ing drum, known as the “breaker,” when it was restarted. The past. Once a risk has been actualized (i.e., the probable event
second happened 35 years later on a large transmission and has occurred), it is no longer a probability; it is an incident,
distribution construction project, where two contract workers mishap or accident. Thus, the $400,000 loss threshold applied
were killed while being transported by helicopter to the top to the incident and not to the risk.
of a transmission tower. The winch-cable on which they were The probability of risk actualization is largely a function of
harnessed below the flying aircraft struck a newly installed the frequency and duration of exposure to one or more hazards.
transmission line. The helicopter’s operations on the day of the near-miss incident
During the investigation of the chemical complex accident, were typical, involving flying, hovering and transporting peo-
it became apparent that the meaning of the red-colored tag ple and equipment during daylight hours. Since the helicopter
assigned to the maintenance department by the site’s written performed these operations over an 8-hr shift, 6 days a week,

22 PSJ PROFESSIONAL SAFETY FEBRUARY 2022 assp.org

 Herman Woessner,
CSP, CPEA, is a ca-
reer safety and health
professional with
more than 5 decades
of experience and
the probability of a harmful occurrence should have been achievements across
Conclusion diverse industries,
estimated to be high, particularly when the variables of wind The wisdom of the common expression organizations and
speed, weather conditions, multitasking and possible mechani- “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” requires operations. He has
cal failure are factored into the probability estimate. first knowing whether something is not led and managed OSH
Risk severity is largely dependent on the amount and form of broken. This can only be ensured through programs in the pri-
energy that can be transferred to or from a hazard upon expo- continual investigation and analysis. vate and public sectors
sure or contact. (Energy is defined as the capacity to move and An organization that does not recog- at the corporate,
accelerate matter and energy.) The amount of harmful energy nized the need to commit resources to division, project, plant
inherent in a flying helicopter, particularly when carrying a clearly and consistently define its safety and department levels.
heavy load, was very high. Thus, the near-miss incident was a and health terms and specialized concepts Woessner is a success-
high consequence, high probability event, which should have ful safety, health and
and to validate their understanding and environmental consul-
been recognized as a high-risk incident. usage cannot be certain that concep- tant, auditor, trainer,
In confusing the concept of “high-consequence incident” tual noise will not enter the mindset of college and university
with the term “high-risk incident,” the accident investigation employees. Nor can it know the adverse instructor, presenter
policy created conceptual noise for decision-makers, partic- effects on other elements of its safety and author. He holds
ularly the Spanish members. The company was a partnership management system and safety culture an M.S. in Safety and
between two global corporations from two countries with and where and how to counteract them. Systems Management
different languages, cultures and histories. The accident inves- This article includes several examples from the University of
tigation policy was adopted from the safety management sys- of conceptual noise that can confound Southern California
tem of the English-speaking partner. The primary language and an M.A. in History
understanding safety terms, concepts
as well as all Ph.D.
of the board members representing the other partner was and communications, and recommends coursework from Loui-
Spanish. They spoke and understood English adequately, but a sustainable fix in the form of a safety siana State University.
much less fluently than their native language. Judging from terminology management program. To He is a professional
the board’s deliberations, the non-English members were un- illustrate what a written program may member of ASSP’s Gulf
familiar with the adopted accident investigation policy and its comprise, an example is included in the Coast Chapter.
terms and concepts. sidebar on p. 21.
It never will be known if findings from a root-cause investiga- As a prominent logician and author, Lewis Carroll under-
tion of the near-miss incident would have led to the prevention stood the conceptual pitfalls of unclear and inconsistent terms
of the fatal mishap, but, as it turned out, the root-cause inves- and definitions, thus, he had Humpty Dumpty assert the need
tigation conducted after the fatal helicopter accident revealed a to “master” the meaning of words. He knew, otherwise, inven-
pattern of relevant unsafe operating practices that predated the tive minds would provide their own meanings. PSJ
near-miss incident and may have been involved in both events. It
is certain that corrective actions would have been taken to pre- References
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