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| News Article in Facility Safety Management Magazine - Monday, November 24, 2008 at 15:31
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(Ex3), a provider of environmental, health, safety, security, and productivity data management, has been awarded the NASA Safety Center Special Act Award for valued and outstanding support.
In announcing the award, NASA officials noted Ex3's work to assist the NASA Safety Center in enhancing its capabilities, and its management of occupational health and safety data, including safety incident investigation in all NASA centers agency wide. Additionally, Ex3 provides the software system for managing space flight hardware issues reporting and resolution.
"This being the second time that we've earned an award from NASA adds to the validity of our products, our technology, and our company overall," said Nathan Giles, president and CEO of Ex3. "This award means that NASA continues to view the partnership with Ex3 as being very successful and productive."
"Ex3 provides data collection and analysis support to the Knowledge Management Systems Office at the NASA Safety Center. Their support is important to the overall success of our project," said Suzanne Otero, NASA project manager.
Ex3 worked with many different NASA Centers and personnel to assess changing requirements and provide the continued innovation in design and scalability critical in how data is being gathered across NASA. The data collection capabilities assist NASA during the challenging technical and organizational transitions supporting the era of exploration for NASA and our country.
"NASA has unique challenges due to the inherently dangerous nature of their work," said Giles, who was actually flying over Texas when the Space Shuttle Columbia disintegrated during re-entry into the earth's atmosphere on February. 1, 2003. "When you hit the ground and something like that has happened around you, it becomes clear the importance of what you're doing."
Giles said the pressures on the people at NASA are more intense than those faced by average manufacturers. Additionally the legacy mainframe system for collecting summary data was difficult to access and falling short of the reporting capabilities needed by NASA. NASA asked Ex3 to help them improve the efficiency of data collection, analysis of that data and thus improve communication across the entire agency.
Ex3 replaced over a hundred different systems for tracking safety incidents. They were tracking everything, but tracking in little pockets with no ability to analyze the data, said Giles. Our program offered visibility across the whole system, and reporting rose 1,700 percent.
"Clearly, the Columbia incident became compelling, very, very visible evidence, fresh in the minds of everybody, that there was a need to do something different," Giles said. "They were ready, but it certainly raised the urgency.
"The thing about the people at NASA is that they're all very proud of what they do. They are extremely conscientious and truly desire to do a good job. They have technical expertise in safety. Ex3 brought additional technical expertise in agency-wide data management."
Giles suggests that often organizations don't have complete and accurate data. When you make reporting easier you typically have a spike. If done right, you're going to see a rise in the number of incidents reported. Once you see that spike you can start to do something about it.
"I'd venture to say that almost every company out there is grossly underreporting because they don't have easy access to systems for collecting all the stuff that doesn't seem important. Do you report near misses If you're only making the minimum effort, you're not reporting enough. You have to give yourself the opportunity to improve."
That's why it's important to make sure that a safety culture is maintained. Software is just a tool, said Giles. If you don't use it or use it right, you're not going to get the value out of it. You have to have the culture to use it and practice it. Safety cultures vary drastically based on the leadership of different organizations, said Giles. There has to be clear direction from leadership with back up. Not just lip service.
"They have to have a passionate commitment. They have to say, 'I can't live with myself if people are dying.' That's the difference. That kind of commitment makes things happen. There are too many companies where leadership says safety is important, but doesn't put money behind it. There's no staffing or funding. They're not really working to make it part of daily life. In a way it has to be a religion within your organization."
Even if data is in front of them, getting people to make empirical decisions rather than emotional decisions is difficult. Because of the clear commitment on the part of NASA leadership to safety culture and practice, and the improvements which have been made to its systems NASA would be more inclined to make better empirical decisions now, added Giles. Culture sets the rules of engagement for the tool. It gets people to actually use the tool, and to have faith in the quality and reliability of the data that's in the tool.
"A tool without the culture won't get you there."
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