Opportunity to contribute to a book about the safety insights of practitioners

Nektarios Karanikas, Queensland University of Technology, AU, Maria Mikela Chatzimihailidou, WSP, UK – a SaRS Fellow – and Alfred Roelen, Netherlands Aerospace Centre, NL are looking for accounts of safety insights from practitioners for a new book they are planning on the subject. Please see below for further details and submission:

What is the current situation?

The roadmap to safety improvement is paved with successes and failures. Tens of tools, ideas, practices, approaches, techniques and models relevant to safety management, investigations and engineering fight for a place in the real world. None of these is absolutely right or wrong; sometimes they match the situation, sometimes not.

What is missing?

Isn’t it time to reflect and publish your stories as exactly you understood and experienced them apart from relying on the understanding of researchers who conduct studies and try to map the overall situation per case based on interviews, observations and questionnaires?

How can you help?

We invite safety professionals from any industry sector (e.g. aviation, rail, energy, healthcare, nuclear, oil & gas, shipping) to support this initiative and share two real cases of theirs, one “success” and one “failure”, explaining the background and their approach, and critically reflecting why their initiatives and activities worked and not.

We are aware that many practitioners are not very keen on writing, but we believe that the idea for the particular book is a great opportunity for professionals to express and share with others their knowledge and experience usually found implicitly or hidden under formal and informal practices. You can co-author your work with other persons too if they played a role in your “stories”.

What do you need to consider?

Regardless of their current role (e.g., industry, consultancy, academia, regulator), contributors are expected to share their own experiences and not the ones of others or collected/observed as part of their current or previous activities (i.e. we are not interested in information from studies, performance/audit/ reports, safety reviews, clients).

You will clarify the role you played in the two cases you will describe (e.g., safety manager, officer, engineer, investigator), but you are not obliged to name the organization(s) to which your stories are linked or disclose your identification details; therefore, you can observe any confidentiality restrictions and ethical values.

Depending on the terms & conditions imposed by the publisher of the book, we can consider using an alias for authors who do not wish to be identified. In case you wish to remain anonymous, we will ask for your permission to include your full name in the first pages of the book as a contributor.

Are you interested in contributing?

If our idea appeals to you, send a one-page summary (about 500 words) of your intended contribution to Nektarios Karanikas (email addresses: nektkar@gmail.com, nektarios.karanikas@qut.edu.au) by the end of June 2019. Your summary will briefly describe the “success” and “failure” cases, and the valuable lessons learned that could be beneficial for others. Please also indicate whether you wish to keep your name unannounced.

What will be next?

There are no strict criteria, but we aim at accommodating diverse cases and different industry domains and avoid covering in the book “similar” stories. All selected authors will be informed accordingly and receive support from the editors of the book in the form of peer-reviews. Upon acceptance of your summary, your final work will be about 2500-3000 words length, but this will be flexible and examined on a case-by-case basis.

Do not hesitate!

The expression of your interest through the submission of the summary does not bring any “commitment” at this point, so no reason to feel hesitant to send your summary!

Please, feel free to spread the word and share this invite with anyone who would be interested.

Nektarios Karanikas, Queensland University of Technology, AU

Maria Mikela Chatzimihailidou, WSP, UK

Alfred Roelen, Netherlands Aerospace Centre, NL