left. He indicated that the janitor was, but was likely sleeping after his night shift. I indicated I needed to talk to him prior to going to the scene. He was called in and the first thing he said to me was, “I knew that was going to happen one day.” When I asked just what he meant by that, he said that the pilot was drunk or at least hung over. How did he know that? He had seen the pilot like that before and that morning he had gone and sniffed on an oxygen bottle in stores before taking off. Toxicology would later indicate he still had a blood alcohol level of 0.05 at the time of the crash. We would later determine that he had failed to raise the flaps from landing to the take-off setting. That was a fatal error on a short lake. When I later asked the janitor why he said nothing to the unknowing owner, his reply was the same as the one in the cartoon: “IT IS NONE OF MY BUSINESS.” I had to bite my tongue to resist telling him that it damn well was and his inaction contributed to the deaths of those five people. Therefore, a Safety policy MUST spell out in no uncertain terms that SAFETY IS EVERYONE’S Business. To me that is the most important message in the policy. Attached is a Safety policy used by Qantas since 1964 that, I believe, had it been in place there and enforced, would have gone a long way in saving those five people’s lives. We have it imprinted in our workbook as a model of a Safety policy that covers all the necessary bases except the just culture when reporting hazards. If you don’t recall what a just culture is, go way back to


article #4 in the D.O.M. magazine March 2015 issue. This important segment of the policy must state that except for willful reckless errors, no discipline will be applied to reported errors even if they result in damage. This just culture statement will be covered in greater detail in the next article.


One should never simply copy someone else’s policy, but it can make an excellent basic template to model. I hope that the attached one is large enough to read. If not, let us know and we can add it to our website. Some basic rules when developing your Safety policy are:


1) Keep it to one page and as simple as possible.


2) Include everyone’s responsibilities — starting with management.


3) Include a just culture statement that informs the readers that there will be no discipline for reported honest mistakes.


4) Work to tie it to your company, as was done in the second example


5) It should complement and certainly never contradict your mission statement.


6) It is management’s responsibility to develop the policy.


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