“Learning From Normal Work”

VS

near miss and High Potential Incidents

High Potential Events are defined as any incident or near-miss that could, in other circumstances, have realistically resulted in one or more fatalities. For example, a heavy object fell on a walkway. Nobody was injured, but there was a potential for a fatality. Therefore, there was an undesired event with low actual severity and high potential outcome severity.

In the case of “Learning From Normal Work”, there is no undesired event, incident, or a near miss. There is no unacceptable outcome. For example, nothing fell. And yet, we want to learn from people doing the work how things can fail, when objects almost fell, and under what conditions this is more likely.