Dualities and dilemmas: contending with uncertainty in large-scale safety-critical projects

© 2016, Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group. Uncertainty is a fact of project life. Most decisions that are made on a safety-critical project involve uncertainty, the consequences of which may be highly significant to the safe and timely delivery of the project. Based on interviews with project management practitioners on nine large-scale civil nuclear and aerospace projects, we explore how uncertainty emerges, and how project management practitioners identify, analyse and act on it. We make three important contributions. First, we present three approaches – structural, behavioural and relational – that individuals and organizations can adopt when contending with project uncertainty. Secondly, we characterize nine dualities at play in the management of project uncertainty and thirdly, we identify key differences between how civil nuclear and aerospace project managers confront project uncertainty, which have important implications for how projects might be organized in both these industry sectors. Drawing attention to the structural, behavioural and relational approaches to project uncertainty and the tensions that manifest themselves in each approach should enable the project management community to make progress in environments of high uncertainty where situations are often complex, rapidly changing and confusing, and yet where, for reasons of safety, failure is not an option

Reflective analysis of safety research in the hospital accident & emergency departments

Providing health care in emergency settings is complex, hazardous work that is vulnerable to failure. Human factors and ergonomics studies of hazardous work in other settings have produced useful insights, innovations, and contributions to improving safety in those fields, so there is great interest in applying similar methods to the study of clinical work. However, the clinical environment presents some unique challenges to researchers. We discuss some of those challenges, based on our experience in conducting a variety of studies in the emergency setting in the US and UK, and offer suggestions for future work in this area

Considering ergonomics in the accident and emergency department: possible or not

Accident and Emergency Department is one of the medical treatment departments that deal with emergency medicine, where patients come without making any appointment in advance. In Malaysia, it was known as Casualty Department previously. The nature of Accident and Emergency Department is complex due to the unpredictability of this department, Accident and Emergency Department is a workplace for multiple types of individuals. This study looked into the numbers of studies that has been carried out in area of ergonomics at Emergency Department of Malaysia Hospitals compared to other department. Numbers of studies are compared to see the loop that exists in Accident and Emergency Department when it comes to ergonomics. This paper will see the ergonomics issues face by healthcare personnel compares to other department in hospitals. Findings showed that, Accident and Emergency Department of Malaysia Hospitals has not been given enough attention regarding the implementation or ergonomics