The Benchmarked Organizations
The co-authors benchmarked five organizations as illustrating the right or the wrong way to manage for high reliability.
1. Bandelier, New Mexico Fire Department. A controlled burn became an uncontrolled inferno causing $1 billion damage.
2. The Bristol Royal Infirmary. It was known at the time as a doctor-knows-best culture with high children death rates. The place deserves to have been called an HDO, or high death organization.
3. Naval aircraft carriers. They have been, say the authors, "a prototype of high reliability systems from the beginning," even though they say that the carriers "are the most dangerous 4 and acres in the world." My written reaction was that "I would give carriers barely a moderate rating considering the literature I've read on their safety record over the years. For instance, a fire broke out on the USS Kitty Hawk in 2008 causing many injuries and $70 million in damage. Moreover, one study found that on-board injury rates were slightly higher than for industries in general.
4. Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant. In my assessment this particular plant and all other nuclear power plants are ticking radioactive time bombs that protestors have tried for decades to get closed. A plant can be accident-free yet till release harmful radiation. Moreover, the Diablo Canyon plant, besides sitting on an earthquake fault line once missed, as noticed in a safety inspection, about 22 missed weld quality hold points. How much radiation escapes from 22 leaky welds?
5. NASA. Sending astronauts into outer space is tricky business. Every detail and backups must be highly reliable. Tragedy may be just a heart-beat away, and that is what happened with the Challenger and Columbia space shuttle disasters in 1986 and 2003 respectively.
You can now understand my aversion to academic literature. The co-authors were clearly benchmarking unreliable organizations, apparently to present lessons learned on what organizations should not do in hazardous situations. Maybe the co-authors could find no HROs to benchmark.
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