Behavioural Approaches to Safety Management within Reactor Plants – a Preliminary Study

Introduction Unsafe behaviours are said to both directly and indirectly contribute to 90% of all workplace accidents and incidents (Holnagel, 1993). Given the importance of behavioural patterns in the accident process it is not surprising that safety improvements focused on individual behaviours have acquired popularity in the development of safety performance (Cooper et al. 1994; Cox and Cox, 1996). However, the implementation and sustainability of such programmes have been variable and many successful programmes that have reportedly improved health and safety performance have seemingly lost momentum (HSE, 2002).