Two parties have “responsibility or ownership” after a STOP card has been written. The “observer” that wrote the card and the “responsible supervisor” for the area or team in which the observation was made.

The “observer” that wrote the card needs to follow up (himself or ensure someone else does) any corrective actions that he has proposed and, when applicable, must give feedback to the person he had the conversation with. If there is no follow up action and no further feed-back to be given there is no further “responsibility” for that card. This is what will be the case with most cards. The database will greatly help individual “observers.”

The “responsible supervisor” for the area or team in which the observation was made must ensure that all cards (handwritten or from the database) raised in his area are collected and reviewed frequently. He should use/discuss the cards on the daily and weekly meetings with his team. A review of the findings and corrective actions on the STOP-cards must become a standard discussion item on these meetings. This is where the value of STOP really comes to bear: daily and weekly discussions at a small local level on what needs to be improved in the day to day safety management of a site or area.

There is also value to be gained from the STOP cards at an Asset Team or Corporate level. The statistics on card numbers and card categories will give valuable information that will be used to steer our safety efforts. This type of analysis will mostly be done with the assistance of unit or corporate HSE advisors.

4.      Collecting and working with the cards: the PDO STOP Database

To assist supervisors in managing the possibly large number of STOP cards that are generated in an area, a user-oriented database has been developed. The key design criteria have been: no additional administrative burden, user friendly, self-explanatory (zero training for users).

A small software program needs to be installed on a PC to enable access to the central database. If the program is not available on a PC already: call the PC-Helpdesk on 1111 for advice.