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Procedures People Actually Follow

Three sites do the same inspection three different ways. The procedure binder keeps growing, and so do the clarification emails. This brief is about getting to one way of doing the work that the people doing it will actually use.

1. The signs

  • New hires learn whichever method their supervisor happens to use.
  • Nobody has reported a problem with a procedure in a year.
  • Competence is proved by a signature on a read-and-sign form.
  • The same question comes up in every project meeting.

2. Why it happens

Written for the work as imagined. Procedures written by experts and handed down drift away from how the work is done; if the crew can't do it as written, the procedure is wrong. SOP-DES-01

Too many, too long. Workers ask for detailed written procedures mainly for high-risk, unusual, infrequent work. A 62-item checklist gets ticked, not read. SOP-DES-07 · SOP-CHK-03

Silence read as compliance. Zero deviation reports usually means people stopped saying "this doesn't work", and a shortcut that becomes normal becomes invisible. SOP-USE-01 · SOP-USE-05

Signatures read as skill. Read-and-sign proves someone received the document, not that they can do the work. SOP-TRN-01

3. What good looks like

  • Tested before release with two or three experienced users and one newcomer, then a supervised field trial. SOP-DES-06
  • The right tool for the task: a checklist, a step-by-step procedure, a decision flowchart or a reference guide, chosen on purpose. SOP-DES-02
  • Named people and real limits: "the site superintendent stops excavation when…", not "work should be stopped if necessary". SOP-DES-09
  • Competence shown, not signed: an observed demonstration for each critical procedure. SOP-TRN-06
  • Supervisors who check in the field, and audits that watch the work, not the binder. SOP-USE-04 · SOP-GOV-05
  • Reviews triggered by events (an incident, a deviation report, new equipment), with a calendar backstop. SOP-GOV-01
The procedure as written

Forty steps, owned by head office, last reviewed three years ago, signed by everyone, followed by nobody in quite the same way.

The procedure as done

Nine critical steps, tested with the crew, an owner and a review trigger, and a supervisor who walks it once a month and logs what doesn't fit.

4. Your first three moves

  1. Pick the one procedure with the most variation and walk it with the people who do it, including a newcomer. SOP-DES-01 · SOP-DES-06
  2. Cut its checklist to the critical items, the ones that kill or cost. SOP-CHK-03
  3. Make deviation safe to report, and count a lesson only when it changes the procedure. SOP-USE-01 · SOP-GOV-06

5. Stress-test it

The fastest way to find out which of your three methods holds up is to run all three teams through the same situation and watch the calls. A TPC Stress Test does that in a half-day session, and the readout shows where each version breaks, which becomes the starting point for one agreed way of working.

The short version. Write for the work as it's done, test before release, keep checklists to what matters, name who acts and when, prove competence by watching it, and treat every deviation report as data.

Stress-test it. See how a TPC Stress Test works. Go deeper: Define · Verify · Avoiding Risk