Trending, Risk Substituted for Probability in the Low
Incident High Consequent Failure and the Substitution
of Frequency in the discussion of Probability
By
Michael Davis
Deepwater Drilling Consultant
B.S. Petroleum Engineering, The University of Texas
at Austin
Founder and CEO of Drill Science Corporation
Deepwater is trending towards interactive complexity and tighter coupling, not
only in the physics between the wellbore and drilling equipment and team and
mother nature and yet in the office in the design and execution process in
general.
Also, there is a trend in frequency.
In the coming years there will be more deepwater drilling rigs and therefore the
frequency of projects moving towards the stats in probability that must be
increasing due to trending complexity and tighter coupling and the simple fact
that easy prospects are drilled first. We mustn’t confuse frequency, probability,
consequence, vulnerability, exposure and risk with simple luck and yet that is
exactly what happens in the outcome bias. The outcome bias is an error
made in evaluating the quality of a decision when the outcome of that
decision is already known. Specifically, the outcome effect occurs when
the same “behavior produce[s] more ethical condemnation when it
happen[s] to produce bad rather than good outcome, even if the outcome
is determined by chance.” This is attributing “luck” to “success” and is
rampantly involved in the issue of drilling process safety.
While similar to the hindsight bias, the two phenomena are markedly
different. The hindsight bias focuses on memory distortion to favor the
actor, while the outcome bias focuses exclusively on weighting the past
outcome heavier than other pieces of information in deciding if a past
decision was correct. Many organizations are judging their past decisions,
their current processes and the errors of their employees “unjustly” exactly
because of the prevalence of the human error of the outcome bias in
drilling organizations.
Author David Marx, identifies several biases that he believes can directly
undermine worker safety (and public safety). Marx, in his book, Whack a Mole:
The Price We Pay for Expecting Perfection Marx introduces the concept of
severity bias. According to Marx, severity bias is the practice of enforcing greater
consequences for those events that produce a more severe outcome. Marx
argues that the outcome of at risk behavior is immaterial—that the true risk lies in
the flawed decision making and recklessness. In other words, it doesn’t matter
whether or not an employee’s actions have never killed or injured someone, the
fact that the behavior’s rewards are so out of proportion with the potential for
harm is enough to judge it inappropriate. If we buy into this bias, we tend to
excuse inappropriate risk taking—and even recklessness—provided that the
behaviors don’t result in an incident.
Professional Bias. Marx also identifies a tendency to treat behaviors more
harshly as one gets closer to the front line of operations. Research has shown
that people tend to let higher ranking professionals off the hook not out of fear of
retaliation, but simply because the higher the rank of a professional the more
likely that people will assume that the executive knows what he or she is doing
and is therefore less deserving of coaching or discipline. When you exhibit
professional bias you create a multi-tiered system of accountability. Simply
stated, you have a double (or triple) standard.
Some Hazards Are Just Common Sense. Another great thinker on the topic of
bias as it pertains to safety is Dr. Robert Long. Long explores the relationship
between risk and human judgment in his book, Risk Makes Sense. Long
contends that there is no such thing as common sense. According to Long
intelligent people make sense of the situation based on there personal
experiences, things they have been taught by their parents, teachers, and
peers. To expect that a worker will intuitively assess the risk of a hazard the way
others in the population would is unreasonable. But often we take it for granted
that people will understand the intrinsic dangers of a circumstance and fail to
manage the hazard as being too trivial, condescending, or even insulting were
we to mention it.