Oil Rig Alarm Was Not Fully Turned On, Worker Says

Once again, one of the biggest learning from the BP oil disaster is that severe disasters are never the result of one smoking gun incident, but a series of errors:

"At hearings this week, crew members have described repeated failures in the weeks before the disaster, including power losses, computer crashes and leaking emergency equipment."

This applies to energy disasters, healthcare disasters (unnecessary death or serious injury to patient), and industrial accidents.  Human beings are very good at putting measures into place and to learn from previous disasters.  The problem is they eventually fail due to human involvement.  It only takes being careless just that one time.  Alarm fatigue became a big issue on the oil rig, and so the workers turned it off so they wouldn't be woken up (listen up car manufacturers!).

Design of systems for human interaction has become the skill du jour.  We practice it heavily at Mobile Aspects.  Our RFID systems for hospitals are some of the easiest to use for any system in healthcare.  But we also realize that design of failure systems is just as important: systems work the way as intended 99% of the time.  1% sounds minuscule, but in reality, it is a large number.  We advocate for our systems and for anything else that our customers ensure the failsafes built in are meant for human use and without alarm fatigue.

From The New York Times:

Oil Rig Alarm Was Not Fully Turned On, Worker Says

The safety alarm was not fully activated to avoid waking up the crew, and so did not sound during the disaster, a worker testified.

http://nyti.ms/a3cmDW

Posted via email from Suneil Mandava's Posterous