Energy & Utilities
When following the procedure starts the fire
An F1000 utilities company defused a $718,692-a-year SOP problem and got field confidence to 90%, after a contractor followed their own SOP and started a fire.
The Complaint
Employees weren't following their own SOPs.
An F1000 multinational utilities company was concerned about its standard operating procedures. Nothing major had happened yet, but leadership knew it eventually would.
The Wake-Up Call
A contractor, a pipe, and 100 firefighters.
The week before the company came to us, a contractor followed the company's own SOP, drilled into a pipe, and caused a fire. Two homes were "significantly damaged." It took 100 firefighters to put it out.
The Backstory
600 SOPs, and a Big Four fix that didn't fix usability.
This utility had merged with a larger company and had to merge more than 600 SOPs as part of the transition. A Big Four firm cataloged and rewrote some of them, but according to the utility's own leadership, the work hadn't improved usability.
The Risk
Workers trusted a phone call more than the procedure.
Our PROS Readability Risk Assessment® found the SOPs were difficult to follow, weren't standardized, and were hard to find in the field, exactly where a mistake would matter most.
What The Assessment Found
Fear was doing the job the SOPs should have done.
- Workers worried that following a flawed SOP to the letter would still get them blamed, and fired, for a mistake
- The team writing and revising SOPs had no formal experience doing so
- No one vetted the SOPs for usability in the field
- The cataloging system was organized by department name, which changed frequently
See what a real review would find in yours.
This is one of three blinded assessments. Take your own Readability Risk Check, or talk to us about what we'd look for in your organization.
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