Where to look and how to find them

Opinion

If you’ve ever investigated an incident, led a formal hazard assessment or risk review, you may have heard this term. It arises in conversations I have, usually related to incident investigations.

What is a single point of failure? That’s a point in the task where only one barrier or control remains to prevent an incident. Essentially, if that single thing fails, everything will go awry. At least, that’s my definition.

Making the workplace safe, the conversation almost always revolves around barriers to loss or similar terms. These hazard controls are in place to ensure a safe workplace. Now we are all familiar with the hierarchy of controls, and that’s a good place to start when we talk about a single point of failure.

Controls

Each type of

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