In high-risk industries, preventing Serious Injuries and Fatalities (SIFs) requires more than traditional safety programs—it requires actively managing risk where it is most concentrated. The greatest exposure occurs at CRITICAL STEPS, moments when a single human error or missing condition can trigger immediate loss of control and irreversible, intolerable harm. This session focuses on practical, field-proven methods to identify, understand, and manage that risk in real time.

Participants will learn how to isolate SIF exposure, distinguish Risk-Important Actions (RiAs) from Risk-Important Conditions (RiCs), and recognize the precursors that signal increasing risk. More importantly, this session provides proven solutions used in high-risk operations to prevent human error from escalating into SIF events through positive control, precision execution, verification, hold points, and fail-safe thinking.

Using real-world examples from industries such as energy, nuclear, and heavy industry, we will demonstrate how organizations move beyond compliance and lagging indicators to actively managing SIF risk at the point of work where workers, hazards, and systems intersect.

Participants will leave with actionable approaches to embed Critical Step Management into planning, execution, and learning—strengthening defences, improving field-level decision-making, and ensuring that what must go right, does go right—the first time, every time.