Managing risk dormancy in multi-team work: application of time-dependent success-and-safety assurance methodology

Abstract

The success and safety of many of today's industrial activities, such as constructing power plants, transmission lines and civil engineering objects, is often influenced by situations, when successful and safe work completion is associated with the implementation of various more or less complex multi-team (MT) layouts. Multi-team effort is characterised by the presence and interaction of numerous, not necessarily concurrent time-and space-constrained interfering activities, as well as by dormant risks. Such risks might threaten the fulfilment of the general task carried out by the main team and/or by other teams on the construction site. This analysis addresses the role of the dormant risks during the fulfilment of a non-simultaneous MT work. The objective of the analysis is to suggest an effective and physically meaningful probabilistic predictive model. The model is aimed at the understanding, quantification and effectively managing the dynamics of the system of interest. The emphasis is on the role of possible dormancies. The study is an extension of the authors' earlier research on spatial and time dimensions in the addressed problem. The study extends the risk management approach to a holistic level. Relevance to human factors/ergonomics theoryThis article characterises the risk dormancy phenomenon to be considered as a proper way of taking into account multi-team (MT) aspects in the occupational safety research. Furthermore, a holistic perception of MT functional complexity allows for a generalised view of MT mutual interaction instead of focusing in the single team behaviour.