UC Berkeley

Safety capacity is the ability to increase the likelihood that work will go right under variable-and uncertain conditions. In construction projects, safety has traditionally been managed using lagging indicators, but these offer limited insights to develop safety capacity. Whereas safety management practices can be reactive and compliance-driven, they can also be proactive and anticipation-driven. Specific mistakeproofing (poka yoke) practices can be either one. In this paper, we argue that mistakeproofing practiced with a proactive mindset helps to build safety capacity. We present an approach for developing and sustaining a mistakeproofing mindset by drawing on concepts from uncertainty management (including risk management), Safety-I, Safety-II, and resilience engineering. To demonstrate this mindset, the Work Operation Framework was applied to analyze two construction examples of mistakeproofing related to safety management. Developing this mindset may narrow the gap between work-as-imagined and work-as-done. It recognizes that making adaptations is a part of doing work and reflects the intelligence of a (group of) worker(s). The reason for developing a mistakeproofing mindset is to support organizations with continuous improvement to increase their safety capacity.