A Little Brain Teaser for Safety People

A Little Brain Teaser for Safety People

First to solve this problem will win a Dr Rob Long book of their choice. If you understand the concept of “Risk Savvy” then you are ineligible – sorry, but this is not a real challenge for you anyway.

• Barry Spud is the dedicated Safety Officer at “Zero Harm” Mine.  He wants to travel to “Risk Savvy” Mine to find out why they are having way less injuries, despite having no targets for injury, no ipad apps, no traditional 3 day inductions and no golden rules for safety. Risk Savvy do not have a Safety Person so he isn’t sure who to interrogate.
• The two mines are 2km apart and each takes responsibility for maintaining their half of the link road.
• Zero Harm Road is rutted, washed out in places and the surface is pot holed, loose and dusty. The Zero Harm grader drivers are very experienced and are concerned about the road but are afraid to say anything.  It has already caused serious damage to several mine vehicles – but this was blamed on poor maintenance by mechanical contractors. However, before grading can be done, it takes 3 hours to complete the risk assessment and paper work, 2 days for approvals to come through and then another risk assessment must be completed as the first expires after 24 hours. They also fear that they might make an error and be injured. This would ruin their upcoming zero milestone, if they report it. Barry’s risk assessment rates the risk of grader roll over or explosion as SEVERE (all 36,798 identified risk at this site are rated the same). For some reason, it has been a while since the road was last graded.
• The grader driver from Risk Savvy is extremely proud of "his" road, it is in excellent condition and he is continually being complemented on it by the Mine Manager.  He even works on it during some of his days off. He has tried to help Zero Harm by fixing some of the really bad bits of their road but got a huge bollocking from Barry because he had the wrong colour flashing light and had not completed the proper inductions and risk assessments. Barry ordered all of the pot holes and washouts to be reinstated as these repairs had not been approved. This grader operator has been black-banned from ever working at Zero Harm because of his cavalier attitude toward risk – not that Risk Savvy would ever let him go as several of his self-reported errors have resulted in some excellent new safety initiatives.
• Due to the poor condition of Zero Harm Road, Barry has mandated that the maximum safe speed on Zero Harm Road is 15km/h. There is no speed limit on Risk Savvy Road with people able drive at a speed they think is appropriate for the conditions and their discernment of the risk.
• Barry has the latest vehicle monitoring and tracking technology in his vehicle. He must achieve an average speed of 30km/h for the entire journey or otherwise incur a non-conformance on his journey plan and therefore have to punish himself.

PROBLEM: CAN BARRY MAKE THIS TRIP WITHOUT A JOURNEY NON-CONFORMANCE? IF SO, HOW FAST DOES HE NEED TO DRIVE ON RISK SAVVY ROAD TO ACHIEVE AN AVERAGE 30 km/h FOR THE WHOLE TRIP, GIVEN THAT MAX SPEED FOR THE FIRST HALF IS ONLY 15km/h?

Answers must be submitted in the comments section below.

PS: Errors and mistakes are seen as positive on this blog and are rewarded – as it is the only way we all learn 🙂

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