Poor little Oliver woke up with his eyes puffy and red. His face was speckled with bright red dots and his throat was scratchy, on its way to sore. If he looked rough on the surface, it was nothing compared to the battle raging inside.
His white blood cells were rallying to the fray, taking on the sickness with all the force God designed them to apply. Finding an intruder in the body, they surrounded and immobilized it and swarmed on to the next. It took a full week, but Oliver woke up refreshed and ready for the day, just seven days on.
When he went back to the playground two months later, no matter the sticky railings, snot-touched play sets, and drool-laden toys he encountered, Oliver was not worried. His body had taken damage but had been repaired and now he had immunity. The same germs and gunk simply had no effect on him.
That lesson in natural immunity may resonate more with young parents like myself than with folks in the trenches or even corporate boardrooms many years after their toddler rearing days. But the core lesson is vital for damage prevention professionals across every level of the industry - once a damage occurs, it should never happen again.
The culprit that infects a job site could be anything: miscommunication, a bad locate, inattention, or even an abandoned line masquerading as a live facility. These common colds are every-day nuisances, while certain ones come seasonally when peak demand and construction season is most active, but no annual trainings are called for to inoculate a stakeholder once they’ve seen and experienced the incident before.
The immune response takes place at the investigation phase. This is when investigators tackle individual root causes and swarm each step in the process to surround it and derive insight into each weakness and vulnerability in the way the job was conducted. But it isn’t just white collars that act as white blood cells at the investigation phase; everyone involved can review their role, identify missteps and near misses, and learn how to improve and fight against the same issue on future jobs.
The role of investigation is first to look backward. A thorough review of the entire process and documentation of every action by every party involved. This ideally uncovers a root cause and sheds light on exactly what went wrong – whether by good faith accident or recklessness. Once compiled, the investigation findings are more than history, they are a map to the future - a plot of land mines to avoid on the path ahead for the next job. They are antibodies for any germs they may encounter next.
Thinking of investigations not only as past records but future assets requires a shift in thinking and action. It requires reading them, training from them, and revisiting them periodically. A leader of a crew or company at every size will use investigations to get up to speed, stay ahead, and incorporate them for their team. Constantly seeing things go wrong in the past has always been the key to avoiding missteps in the future. There is a reason for the staying power of the quote “those who don’t read history are doomed to repeat it.” And it applies to damage prevention as well or better than any other sector.
So keeping the antibodies is a task, it is not the natural response to experiencing an incident. While recent memory and the mental or even financial pain of a damage may serve as short-term immunity on the next job, it isn’t enough for long term health. Revisiting incidents – first through investigations and then as a habit – is the way to permanently eradicate the issues plaguing jobs.
After a good investigation, no matter the scale or type of damage incident at the core, the parties involved and the entire industry should have a clear playbook for avoiding the incident again. Not repeating the same incident is how the industry stays healthy.
It doesn’t mean an incident can never happen again. But just as a healthy body will experience sickness from time to time, a healthy industry will generate an immune response to every root cause, and over time, eradicate certain ailments for good.
Benjamin Dierker is the Executive Director of the Alliance for Innovation and Infrastructure and author of Holding Back Disaster: Protecting Lives and Infrastructure Through Excavation Damage Prevention.