A Never-Ending Story
Trapping Safety into Rules: How Desirable orAvoidable is Proceduralization?
Bieder, Corrine; Bourrier, Mathilde (editors). Farnham, Surrey, England and Burlington, Vermont, U.S: Ashgate, 2013. 300 pp. Figures, tables, references, index.
Trapping Safety into Rules — there is a title as provocative as you are likely to see this year in books aimed at aviation safety professionals.
No one needs a definition of rules. Bieder and Bourrier describe “proceduralization” as “firstly, the aim of defining precise and quantified safety objectives, and secondly, the aim of defining a process, describing and prescribing at the same time how to achieve such objectives.” Unfortunately, “these two aspects are usually not defined by the same entity. Some inconsistencies may even exist between the two types of procedures.”
Questioning the role of rules and proceduralization goes to the heart of commercial aviation, one of t…
