ABSTRACT
There are very few managers of hazardous technologies who are unfamiliar with Safety Management Systems (SMSs). They are products of a steady series of moves towards self-regulation, or even deregulation – part of a regulatory progress that began in the 1970s and became a standard feature of the 1990s and beyond. Now they are virtually universal. In brief, the progress was a gradual transition from reactive to proactive methods of managing and controlling hazards. A detailed history of this development is given in Managing the Risks of Organizational Accidents,1 but I will outline the main stages below:
• In 1974, Lord Robens headed the inquiry into the Flixborough disaster. The recommendations of the Robens Committee formed the basis – with remarkably little governmental tinkering – of the Health and Safety at Work Act (HSW). This was the springboard for the current state of proactive regulation. Unlike the Factories Act that preceded it, HSW did not go into great detail with regard to specific accident producers.
