Description

Most organisations have safety systems. Policies. Procedures. Audits. Committees. Training records. Risk registers.

And yet serious incidents still happen.

The Operating System of Safety challenges the comfortable assumption that having a safety management system means safety is actually being managed. Tom Bourne argues that real safety is not created by documents alone, but by the way decisions, controls, information flows, feedback loops, supervision, accountability, and culture operate under pressure.

Drawing on more than twenty-five years of safety experience and major case studies including Piper Alpha, Longford, BP Texas City, Deepwater Horizon, Pike River, Moura, Boeing 737 MAX, Mid Staffordshire, Walkerton, Beaconsfield, and Waterfall, this book shows why systems that look mature on paper often fail in practice.

It introduces a practical framework for thinking about safety as an operating system: something that either works in the real world or does not.

Written for safety professionals, students, supervisors, leaders, and board members, this book helps readers ask the harder question:

Not “do we have a safety system?”
But “does our safety system actually work?”