Preoccupation with Failure: The Foundation of a safe culture

Article Summary This article presents the findings of an organisational safety review focused on Near Miss incidents related to Process Integrity within a large oil and gas organisation. The study examines 1,032 recorded incidents, of which Process Integrity events accounted for a substantial proportion of overall incident severity risk. The objective is to assess current incident management practices and identify opportunities for strengthening safety culture through proactive risk prevention. Using qualitative and quantitative analysis of incident data and established incident severity rating methodologies, the review evaluates organisational responses, reporting processes, and governance structures. The analysis is informed by theoretical insights from High Reliability Organisation literature, particularly the principle of preoccupation with failure. The article highlights limitations of predominantly reactive safety approaches and outlines strategies for enhancing learning, reporting, and resilience. The work is relevant to safety management research and to practitioners seeking to improve organisational safety performance in high-risk industries. Publisher’s NoteThis work is published by the Catholic Open University – Research & Study Center as part of its Research and Publishing Program. All published materials undergo editorial review to ensure academic integrity, originality, and compliance with ethical research and publishing standards. Each publication is assigned a persistent digital identifier (DOI) to support long-term accessibility, citation, and global scholarly dissemination.Availability Official article page:https://www.catholicopenuniversity.org/articles/proactive-safety-culture Catholic Open University Digital Library:https://www.catholicopenuniversity.org/publications