Close calls are filled in to meet the quota

Close calls are filled in to meet the quota of close calls needed to be filled in.

Close call programmes don't directly improve safety.

If safety improves, it wasn't the close call reporting that led to safety improvement...

Granted, sometimes, you might find out something that you really didn't know, reported by someone else about someone else.

But when the close call is about the milk being out of date or the barrier that has fallen down and I picked it up, it's just to satisfy the numbers.

I'm not saying that the behaviour of talking about the things that are wrong and sorting them shouldn't happen, it totally should, but this should happen at a local level.

People often complain that they don't get feedback from close calls report.

If it was site based, and supervisor based, if it were genuine, they always would get feedback, each gang reporting and sorting. The site manager dipping in every so often to see if they need any help and to make sure they are doing a good job talking and sorting.

But I need to see the trends, you might argue...

Well, the trends will be the same as they were last year, and the year before that. It's construction, or a factory, or a railway, same shit different day.

Wrong track, trips, slips, access, exclusion zones, cuts, no glasses, no gloves. tool not tethered, bloke not clipped on, toe boards missing from tower etc etc, very rarely anything novel.

The idea is generally ok, but the execution is flawed on most sites, in most companies as the emphasis is on the report, not the creation and nurturing of teams that look after each other.