Tuesday, October 28, 2008

CAA Operations level 2 Course - Canmore


Hi folks - I just complete the Module 1 of the CAA level 2 course in Canmore. This was a very good course and has given me lots of ideas of how to make Big Red Cats better. Much of the module 1 is focused on people issues.

One of the helpful ideas to come out of the course is Reason's model. This basically says that there are layers in any organisation where Latent or active failures can occur. A bad result happens when the failures are able to get through the many layers of the safety system. The analogy that is used is slices of Swiss Cheese - The holes in the cheese are the potential weakness or failures. When the Holes in the cheese all line up you have a failure. So before anything happen you want to plug as many holes as possible. So our strategy for the year is to work on our safety management system. We have more training planned than ever before. Also 6 of our guides are working on further guide certification this winter. Also we will redo all our run maps. We are also working on a very detailed avalanche Atlas for the organisation. We will also put in place a number of new procedures and protocols.

Another concept for the Level 2 course was the concept of a High Reliable organisation (HRO) some examples of HRO are some parts of the Milatary, some surgical teams. We would like Big Red Cats to be a HRO. To help make this happen we are planning a revision of our safety management system. Essentially we want to be an organisation where nothing slips though the cracks. This is going to take a few years to get there with lots of training.
Went out and an buoilt another 900 meters of snowcat road today. This will futher improve acccess to about 8 runs. The weather looks good until the week-end so we will keep cutting whilst we can.
Kieren
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