Safety Critical Items/Complexities

Potential safety critical items and complexities within the task for which the procedure is designed must be identified and comprehensively addressed when writing the procedure.

Safety critical items are components in which failure could cause loss of life, permanent disability or major injury, loss of a system, or significant equipment damage.

Complexities refer to the aspects of written procedures that affect workers’ abilities to perform the procedures correctly, and include step size, step information, judgment, decision making, and interdependency.

Safety critical items and interdependencies are identified using a variety of techniques, including the criticality matrix as described in the next section.