Written by Troy Clark – TroyClarkInsight.com
After an incident, hazards can look remarkably obvious.
The unprotected edge was visible, and equipment was moving nearby. A worker was standing in a location that, knowing what happened next, clearly created an exposure.
Looking back, it can be difficult to understand how someone missed it.
We often treat seeing a hazard and recognizing a hazard as if they are the same thing. They are not always the same. Something can be directly within our field of vision without receiving enough attention for us to consciously recognize its significance.
There is a simple demonstration of this that makes the point better than a long explanation ever could.
Watch This Before Reading Further
If you have never seen Daniel Simons’ selective attention test, watch it before continuing.
Watch the Selective Attention Test on YouTube
Follow the instructions in the video before reading further.
The demonstration is rooted in research conducted by psychologists Daniel Simons and Christopher Chabris on what is known as inattentional blindness. Their 1999 study showed that people concentrating on a visual task could fail to notice an unexpected event occurring in the same scene.
For anyone interested in the research behind the demonstration, the original study, “Gorillas in Our Midst: Sustained Inattentional Blindness for Dynamic Events,” is worth reading.
Most people don’t see the gorilla.
What interests me is what the experiment says about the confidence we place in our own attention.
Looking at Something Is Not Necessarily Recognizing It
Construction places constant demands on attention.
A carpenter may be concentrating on an alignment problem while other work develops nearby. An equipment operator may be controlling movement while monitoring changing conditions around the machine. A superintendent can walk through an active project thinking through the schedule and site access while a conversation from five minutes earlier is still in his head.
Attention can also be occupied before the work itself begins demanding it. A worker may arrive thinking about concerns at home or money. An unfinished problem from earlier in the day may still be occupying part of that person’s thinking, or the person may simply be tired after a bad night. Those things can compete for attention when the work depends on noticing changing conditions.
A hazard remains present even when someone’s attention is elsewhere, and physical presence alone cannot guarantee conscious recognition.
Research into construction hazard recognition provides an important connection here. Studies using eye-tracking technology have examined how workers visually search construction scenes and found relationships between viewing patterns and hazard-recognition performance.
That research should not be stretched into proof that every missed hazard is an example of inattentional blindness. Its value here is narrower. It shows that hazard recognition involves more than simply having a hazard somewhere in a person’s field of view.
One example is this research on construction workers’ viewing patterns and hazard recognition.
“You Should Have Seen It” Looks Different Afterward
Imagine reviewing a photograph after an incident.
You already know something happened. You probably know approximately where it happened, and someone may have explained the condition you should examine.
The employee working there beforehand did not have that advantage.
This does not excuse a poor decision or eliminate accountability when someone knowingly disregards a requirement. It does mean an investigation should be careful about assuming that a visible condition was consciously recognized simply because it appears obvious afterward.
A better investigation considers what was demanding the person’s attention and whether conditions had changed. It should also consider what the worker expected to see and whether the work depended too heavily on one person detecting a developing condition.
Identifying the last action taken before an incident is rarely enough to explain why the situation developed. The way the work was planned and supervised can influence what happened, as can the equipment and surrounding operation.
Hazard Recognition Is a Skill
An earlier MSC Safety Solutions article on using safety inspections to develop a more proactive safety culture explains how inspection findings can help identify hazard-recognition and training needs.
If a supervisor repeatedly walks a project and identifies very little while other qualified observers consistently find meaningful conditions, that may reveal a development need.
Experience helps, but familiarity can create its own problems. Someone who performs the same work every day knows things an occasional observer will never understand. Familiar conditions can also become normal enough that they stop attracting attention.
That is one reason hazard analysis benefits from more than one perspective.
“Who Should Write a JHA? Why Worker Involvement Makes Job Hazard Analysis Better” examines why the people performing the task often possess information that never appears in a formal plan or procedure. An experienced worker may notice something a newer employee misses, while supervision or a safety professional may see the work differently again.
The purpose is not to determine whose eyes are better.
It is to reduce how much the safety of the operation depends on one person’s eyes.
Planning Should Challenge What We Expect to See
People naturally develop expectations about what they are going to encounter. A JHA or lift plan can strengthen those expectations, as can the schedule and established work method.
That is useful until reality changes.
A crew that expects access from one direction may pay less attention to an exposure developing somewhere else. A supervisor expecting one sequence may initially interpret the work through that sequence even when field conditions begin pushing the crew toward another method.
A stronger review process asks people to challenge the plan rather than simply acknowledge it.
“Don’t Ask Workers to Sign the JHA. Ask Them to Challenge It” explores that idea in more detail. Giving people permission to look for what the plan may have missed can help expose assumptions before the work begins.
We Should Design Work With Human Attention in Mind
The wrong conclusion from inattentional blindness would be that workers cannot be expected to recognize hazards.
Hazard recognition remains an essential responsibility.
The more useful lesson is that human attention has limitations, and good planning should account for them.
Construction already does this in many ways. A physical barrier can prevent exposure without waiting for someone to notice the danger. A spotter can provide another perspective when visibility is limited. Warning systems can deliberately pull attention toward a developing condition.
Planning provides another layer when it anticipates where attention is likely to be concentrated and where another control may be needed.
This becomes especially important as field conditions change. As discussed in “When Safety Policies Reach Their Limits,” written procedures cannot anticipate every combination of circumstances a construction crew will encounter. Good supervisors still have to recognize when the conditions in front of them no longer match the assumptions behind the plan.
The Hazard Really Was Right There
After an incident, someone may still look at the scene and say, “The hazard was right there.”
They may be correct.
But location and recognition are different issues.
Inattentional blindness is only one possible explanation for a missed hazard. Its value is in challenging the assumption that visibility guarantees recognition.
That should influence training and incident investigation. It should also shape inspections and the controls built into the work.
If preventing an injury depends entirely on one person noticing the right thing at exactly the right moment, there may be another hazard worth recognizing.
Safety Leadership
Recommended tags:
Construction Safety, Hazard Recognition, Inattentional Blindness, Human Factors, Safety Leadership, Jobsite Safety
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The Hazard Was Right There. Why Didn’t Anyone See It?
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What inattentional blindness can teach construction leaders about hazard recognition, incident review, training, and the limits of human attention.
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Featured Image
Use a long horizontal, realistic construction photograph showing an active work area where an important condition exists in the scene but is not artificially highlighted.
Workers should be naturally occupied with their tasks. Avoid pointing, clipboards, posed safety discussions, exaggerated hazards, text, arrows, warning graphics, or anything that tells the viewer what they are supposed to notice.
Alt text:
Construction workers focused on their tasks in an active work area illustrating the challenge of hazard recognition.
