Managing Last-Minute Change

Over half of all serious injuries and fatalities involve an unexpected change in the work process or environment. When it comes to managing change, we often tell our workforce to plan for change and stop work when something changes. Although this is nice and easy to say, the workforce is faced with the reality that it is impossible to anticipate every possibility, much of our work is in constant flux, and we cannot afford to stop and re-plan for every minor deviation. In this project, we will attempt to measure how good we are at anticipating change; understand why we recognize some types of change but not others; and explore how we can better manage last-minute change in our quest to eliminate serious injuries and fatalities.