Professionals, experts, and super experts:an insight into rule-based safety and managed-based safety

On the one hand, experts are respected icons, recognized as life-savers, and role models for the youngest; on the other hand, they take more risks and have more accidents than the average person.

In this Industrial Safety Opinion Piece, FonCSI’s Director, René Amalberti revisits two well-known, but often misunderstood concepts: rule-based safety and managed-based safety. Managed-based safety, is the result of ‘intelligent’ actions that are undertaken by operators who cannot follow procedures because none exist for the situation they are faced with.

He proposes several levels of managed-based safety:

• professionalism
• super professionalism
• outstanding expertise

He also suggests some ways to integrate these profiles into the organization.