Multiply Safety receives a lot of questions regarding safety tips, safety strategy and how to implement the Vertical Safety Technique. Here is a list of more commonly asked questions:

1. What is safety?

Safety is a qualitative parameter describing the protective feel of the person questioned. To manage predictable safety outcomes quantitative derivatives are required. These are;

· Security

· Health

· Systems

Security is managed by “Generals” while Health is managed by “Doctors”. However, nobody seems to be managing Systems.

Systems generally refer to business systems or infrastructure. In terms of a country such as South Africa, a typical allocation will be as follows:

2. What is strategy?

Strategy is the approved objective a company formulates to achieve its shareholder’s requirement. In terms of safety, strategy can be compared to the way a military General would solve a conflict as safely as possible. That is, the General would implement his own security, health and systems measures to ensure predictable safety.

3. How safe are we?

Modern humans tend to have an average life span of 70 years. Over time humans are becoming safer due to improvements in health and security management. However, more consumers cause global warming while over population threatens water supply etc. The safety of humans, plants and animals will always be threatened by things, aspects or scenarios we have not even noticed yet. Until we treat death with the respect it deserves, we and the organizations we work for will forever remain unsafe.

4. But isn’t safety already covered?

Safety Systems have been completely de-constructed in a myriad of uncoordinated activities (try Google). Most all of these activities relate to low risk ordered systems in a linear world.

However, the world has learned that safety improves productivity and is therefore something technical that should be invested in. We have also learned that safety can be balanced with economics but because linear techniques are being used, this act of balancing has not proven very effective yet.

Legal safety and health regulations are aimed at Commerce thereby ignoring governmental responsibilities.

That safety is (still) not covered is noticeable from the safety plateau currently experienced in the world.

5. How can we improve our safety?

Re-constructing safety will improve our qualitative feel of protection. It will cause us to assess modern threats properly and allow us to manage safety in a predictable manner.

Other proponents of safety such as Dave Snowden and Deloitte propose complex techniques to cross the safety plateau, but those will eventually be ineffective until safety re-construction is implemented.

6. What is the difference between strategic and operational safety?

Anything that is linear and short term is operational. Strategy is by nature competitive and so is safety strategy. That means that the part of safety you do not want to talk about is strategic.

However, safety principles require honest reporting and non-punitive regulations as regards real “accidents” and this require open communication which is contrary to strategic approach. But at the same time it is strategically correct to be open and honest with respect to safety.

This applies first and foremost to each Government that has to admit to the amount of dead soldiers in a conflict regardless of whether the “opponent” receives the same information. The same applies to HIV infected people and associated deaths. Hiding such statistics has proven to be non-productive and even childish.

Real strategic safety lies between the sustainable and operational values of safety, i.e. in the customized system “engine”. A successful strategy will attempt to merge those values in non-linear fashion.

7. Why is safety a business problem?

Safety is actually a human problem. The earth does not really care about humans and would not miss us in terms of geological time. At the next lower level Governments should manage safety (properly) but since Russia (as an example) killed millions of its own citizens under Stalin, it does not seem to work.

Corporations require productivity and humans perform better in safe environments. Because of this sensitivity corporations motivate better regulations through political donations etc.

The current de-constructed state of safety may have been a result of management wrangling with negative regulators, but enough experiential evidence exists today in the Aviation and Automation Industries to re-construct sustainable safety for all industries, including governments.

Corporations need to take the lead in order to prevent regulators from implementing a negative spiral of punitive action thereby negatively affecting business as a whole.

8. How does safety rank against other business issues?

Other business issues relate to input, process and output i.e. optimizing supply and demand. The role of safety in such a scenario is very operational oriented with respect to supporting functions. For example, manufacturing a vehicle but then doing it safely, generally as an after thought.

However, the priority business issue list of a typical manufacturing company may look as follows:

• Chinese competition (threat)
• Energy (supply)
• Punitive regulations (Competition and Governance process)
• Consumer (demand)

Industry has intuitively identified safety as a support function and delegated it to a managerial expert. This sometimes contrasts with declared statements such as “Safety is our first priority”.

Safety has become a legal issue while it should be managed in a technical manner by concentrating on systems. This will reduce its legal impact and make it part of “design and production’s” responsibility, adding value in the process.

Safety is therefore a continuous priority as opposed to one of the targeted priorities.

9. Would a safety solution add significant value to a priority business objective?

A safety focus has the following effects on typical business priorities:

• Chinese competition. Chinese companies are notoriously unsafe. Their employee turnover risk and associated delays may affect contracts wrt penalties. They are therefore also not value-adding long term partners. However, having such a competitor opens discussions with respect to minimum salary levels. It also allows headhunting of talented Chinese workers.
• Energy supply. Lack of energy supply requires energy effective usage. Lesser energy gradients equates to improved safety by raising awareness of “care” of application. Energy and safety training is easily dovetailed for production employees causing relative production increases using less energy.
• Punitive regulations. Criminal liability increase defensive behaviour and reduces productivity in a company, but also reduces national competitiveness. Optimizing strategic safety activities will reduce liability and governance requirements and improve profitability.
• Consumer demand. Safe production and safe products generally go hand in hand. Should consumers be affected by unsafe products the supplier may lose a lot of money through insurance premiums and reputation loss such as Toyoda and Air France.

10. What are the strategic risks of pursuing a safety solution?

Since safety is currently a continuous priority the only risk experienced is the safety plateau. Since regulators do not understand this, Companies will be forced into a punitive action regime. Therefore, the strategic risk is rather if safety is not pursued.

This risk is two-fold;

a. Punitive action criminalising executive managers resulting in defensive, under performing industries with no investment future.

b. Regulators technically regulating incorrectly. This means that if regulators make mistakes such as certifying aircraft for flight when they should not, fatalities can also occur for the cost of the associated corporation. In this case however, the regulators should pay all claims using taxpayer’s money.