In the drilling industry, it’s not if things will go wrong, it’s when and how often. Frequently, success as a driller means not giving up through sheer tenacity and stubbornness. After all, it’s only earth and steel, right? We should be able to outsmart it.
But what do we do when things go wrong? On occasion, we all become frustrated and angry, but that leads us no closer to solving the problem or finding the root cause of a near miss or accident. The safety coordinator at my training facility (called a safety officer at most companies) recently implemented a simple approach to find the cause of accidents or incidents. I consider him a mentor, and he offered great help to me when I first began teaching, so when he suggested this approach, I figured I would try it.