Safety through organisational learning, or evaluating disaster management exercises with SOL analysis, part I.

Abstract

Safety through Organisational Learning methodology (SOL), as a proven tool for supporting organisational learning from safety relevant events, means that an organisation conducts systematic analyses of accidents, incidents or near misses and feeds the resulting experience back to its members using an appropriate reporting or management system. It was the first time that SOL‐methodology was used for Evaluating an International Exercise by European Project. The general purpose of the project was testing SOL as a post‐evaluating procedure for this full‐scale field exercise. The particular purposes of the event analysis were to identify the main individual, group or organisational reasons for, and key technological factors of, the events that occurred. Analysing with SOL allows the identification of concrete alternative corrective actions/measures by which the probability that similar events occur in the future can radically be reduced. Furthermore, such measures help organisational learning, thereby contributing to the development and maintenance of a long‐term, safe organisational culture. The first part introduces classical event analysis methods and psychology of the SOL safety event analysis methodology, and the second part describes the evaluation of disaster management exercise (drill) by SOL analysis.