About EBSA21 - Course K - Behaviour-based (bio)safety

EBSA21 - Course K - Behaviour-based (bio)safety

Jan-Piet Tijssen and Cathy Bakker 


Course description
This course intends to inspire you. To convince you that safety not only pays (for you and the company), but also is fun and moreover a serious profession. A profession that involves many areas of knowledge and a multitude of skills, amongst others those dealing with human behaviour.
The course will get you thinking about how to convince and motivate others. Co-workers but also, not in the last place, the management. Not just words and rulings, but setting the example is of utmost importance.
It’s about how to influence behaviour, when to apply punishment or reward, how to make the safe way the most attractive and apart from preventing accidents, also to learn from near misses and get to the root causes.
Cathy is a biosafety officer and Jan-Piet is an inspector. Roles that are not conflicting but rather support each other. Together with you we hope to further explore this difficult subject of human behaviour in relation to biosafety.
Target audience
All who are interested in improving the (bio)safety culture in their working environment and organization.
Learning objectives

  • Awareness of safety culture and behaviour
  • Tools to change and improve culture and attitudes
  • Tools to improve safety: introduction to (Black) Bow Tie Analysis


Main topics

  • Safety and culture, a definition
  • Tools for change and improvement (punish and/or reward)
  • (Black) Bow Tie analysis: What can go wrong and why has it gone wrong


Citation of the respective sections of CWA 16335:2011 Biosafety professional competence
The workshop relates to several issues addressed in CWA 16335:2011, especially some of those addressed in:

  • C.2.1.2.3 Human factors
    • Behaviour-based safety
    • Working in a team;
  • C.2.1.2.7 Facility design
    • The design team (architects and engineers, principal investigators, users, management, safety, maintenance, communication);
  • C.2.1.2.14 Incident and accident investigation
    • Incident and accident fact collection, analysis and evaluation
    • Identify effective corrective actions.
  • C.2.1.2.15 Biorisk management programme
    • Understand the principles of management systems;
    • Responsibilities within the hierarchy (including managers and committees);
    • Policies,
    • Audits and inspections – principles;
    • Training programme
    • Communication and motivation skills;