Evaluation and improvement of a method for assessing HSMS from the resilience engineering perspective: A case study of an electricity distributor

This article presents an evaluation and proposals for improving a method for assessing health and safety management systems. This method takes resilience engineering (RE) as its underlying philosophy and was originally devised and tested in a case study of a manufacturing plant. Four main changes were proposed in comparison with the original version of the method: (a) a framework for assessing the use of RE principles more systematically; (b) guidelines for developing an action plan as a result of the assessment; (c) re-organization of the data collection tools in order to increase their ease of use; and (d) procedures for facilitating the assignment of scores to the items assessed. The evaluation of the method, which was not restricted to the changes described in this article, was conducted based on seven criteria for evaluating safety assessment tools. Both the evaluation and the impact of the changes are discussed based on a case study, in which the method was applied in a company that distributes electricity.

Research highlights
► The main improvement concerns a framework for assessing resilience and brittleness.
► The method gives insights into informal processes.
► To a large extent, the shortcomings detected by the method are latent conditions.
► The application of the method is time-consuming.