Superstrings of Safety

In Brian Green’s book “The Elegant Universe” he describes two views of the universe; one that deals with Newton’s laws of gravity and Einstein’s theory of relativity, and the vanishingly small world of quantum physics. The two models seem correct in their given context, but both cannot be right as they have fundamental and irreconcilable differences.That got me thinking about the world of safety. On one hand we have large scale measures like the Lost Time Injury Frequency Rate (the value of which will be a topic of a future article), lost man hours, insurance premiums, legal fines and environmental costs. At the other end of the scale we use things like job safety analysis, standard operating procedures, permits to work or just plain common sense. I don’t believe the two views are compatible in the same way gravity and quantum physics are not compatible.

Opponents will point out that the large measures are emergent properties of what happens “at the coal face”. Good operating procedures and permits to work result in lower LTIFRs and reduced injuries, but I have yet to see a single report that successfully correlates anything with the fluctuations in LTIFRs.

The truth is there is a superstring that explains all these things. All these measures are emergent properties of a deeper truth – energy causes damage. In order for injury, disease, plant damage, lost productivity or environmental damage to occur an exchange of energy must occur.

Using deceptively simple methodologies we can identify the potentially damaging energies, examine the controls present over those energies, their likelihood of failure and the potential consequences.These do not need to be big, expensive and difficult to use tools, yet they result in astounding results. Have a look at the presentation and give us some feedback.

Superstrings of Safety (6,757KB PDF)