ABSTRACT
I would guess, or maybe just hope, the BBS consulting firms no longer use terms like “man failures” when selling their programs to management teams, yet that is still the core concept of BBS. As an outsider, it seems like BBS is marketed as a “quick fix” program that can be sold to management teams struggling with high injury rates and ineffective safety programs. Large consulting firms that want to take up residence in their clients’ facilities have to create big expansive programs to sell. BBS fits that model. The BBS model allows them to place their consultants for an extended period in a facility in order to maintain their mass. If you explore the BBS topic on the Internet, you will certainly find conflicting opinions, like the article excerpts above, about the value of its usage. BBS detractors feel it is a very costly approach that has a minimal impact in the end, while its supporters, mainly those selling BBS, are quick to point out its financial payback. The core problem I see is that BBS only focuses on one small part of the overall safety process when the management of a business is a myriad of processes that are all intertwined. Addressing one symptom of a broken management system does not fix the whole. Will you see improved short-term safety metric results if you implement BBS? Probably. BBS temporarily redirects the compliance-based safety culture and reduces the injury rate. You get what you measure is an old saying that is applicable in this case. Will you see long-term safety culture change? Not likely, because the focus of BBS is the person and not the process. As a Lean thinker, I am a firm believer that the process, not the person, is the problem. BBS does not dig deep enough to get to the underlying causes of a broken safety culture. It only treats a symptom of that broken safety culture-injuries. I think the underlying reason why BBS is ineffective over the long run is that it is an offshoot of traditional compliance-based safety. It is a tool for compliance safety experts and consultants. Why is that a problem? Because compliance-based safety has
always been a top-down directive activity that failed to engage the employees in the definition and management of the safety processes within a business. So when a management team or the resident safety expert decides to implement BBS, it is just another top-down decision forced upon others. Managing safety in this way, from the top down, rarely gets to the cultural issues that need attention.
