Skip to main content
IOSH Magazine: Safety, Health and Wellbeing in the world of work - return to the homepage IOSH Magaazine logo
  • Visit IOSH Magazine on Facebook
  • Visit @ioshmagazine on Twitter
  • Visit IOSH Magazine on LinkedIn
Non-verbal communication
How to build trust
March/April 2023 issue

Main navigation

  • Home
    • Browse previous issues
    • Member accolades
    • Member tributes
  • Health
    • Mental health and wellbeing
      • Bullying
      • Drugs and alcohol
      • Mental health
      • Stress
      • Wellbeing
    • Musculoskeletal disorders (MSDs)
      • Ergonomics
      • Manual handling
      • Vibration
    • Occupational cancer
      • Asbestos
      • Hazardous substances
      • Radiation
  • Safety
    • Incident management
      • Chemicals
      • Electricity
      • Fire
      • First aid
      • Slips and trips
    • Non-health related fatalities
      • Road safety
      • Work at height
    • Risk management
      • Confined spaces
      • Disability
      • Legionella
      • Lifting operations
      • Lone workers
      • Noise
      • Personal protective equipment
      • Violence at work
      • Work equipment
      • Workplace transport
  • Management
    • Human factors
      • Accident reduction
      • Behavioural safety
      • Control of contractors
      • Migrant workers
      • Older workers
      • Reporting
      • Safe systems of work
      • Sickness absence
      • Young workers
    • Leadership and management
      • Employee involvement
      • Management systems
    • Management standards
      • ISO 45001
      • ISO 45003
    • Planning
      • Assurance
      • Compliance
      • Emergency planning
      • Insurance
    • Rehabilitation
      • Personal injury
      • Return to work
    • Strategy
      • Corporate governance
      • Performance/results
      • Regulation/enforcement
      • Reputation
    • Sustainability
      • Human capital and Vision Zero
  • Skills
    • Communication
    • Personal performance
      • Achieving Fellowship
      • Career development
      • Competencies
      • Personal development
      • Professional skills
      • Qualifications
    • Stakeholder management
    • Working with others
      • Leadership
      • Future Leaders
  • Jobs
  • Covid-19
  • Knowledge Bank
    • Back to basics
    • Book club
    • Infographics
    • Podcast
    • Reports
    • Webinars
    • Videos
  • Products & Services
  • Management
    • Human factors
      • Sickness absence
      • Accident reduction
      • Behavioural safety
      • Control of contractors
      • Migrant workers
      • Older workers
      • Reporting
      • Safe systems of work
      • Young workers
    • Leadership and management
      • Employee involvement
      • Leadership
      • Management systems
    • Management standards
      • ISO 45001
      • ISO 45003
    • Planning
      • Assurance
      • Compliance
      • Emergency planning
      • Insurance
    • Strategy
      • Corporate governance
      • Performance/results
      • Regulation/enforcement
      • Reputation
    • Sustainability
      • Human capital and Vision Zero
  • Health
    • COVID-19
    • Mental health and wellbeing
      • Bullying
      • Drugs and alcohol
      • Mental health
      • Stress
      • Wellbeing
    • Musculoskeletal disorders (MSDs)
      • Ergonomics
      • Manual handling
      • Vibration
    • Occupational cancer
      • Asbestos
      • Hazardous substances
      • Radiation
  • Safety
    • Incident management
      • Chemicals
      • Electricity
      • Fire
      • First aid
      • Slips and trips
    • Non-health related fatalities
      • Road safety
      • Work at height
    • Risk management
      • Confined spaces
      • Disability
      • Legionella
      • Lifting operations
      • Lone workers
      • Noise
      • Personal protective equipment
      • Violence at work
      • Work equipment
      • Workplace transport
  • Skills
    • Communication
    • Personal performance
      • Career development
      • Competencies
      • Personal development
      • Qualifications
      • Professional skills
      • Achieving Fellowship
    • Stakeholder management
    • Working with others
      • Leadership
      • Future Leaders
  • Transport and logistics
  • Third sector
  • Retail
  • Mining and quarrying
  • Rail
  • Rehabilitation
    • Personal injury
    • Return to work
  • Utilities
  • Manufacturing and engineering
  • Construction
  • Sector: IOSH Branch
    • Sector: Northern Ireland
    • Sector: Midland
    • Sector: Merseyside
    • Sector: Manchester and North West Districts
    • Sector: Ireland East
    • Sector: Ireland
    • Sector: Edinburgh
    • Sector: Desmond-South Munster
    • Sector: Qatar
    • Sector: Oman
    • Singapore
    • Sector: South Coast
    • Sector: South Wales
    • Sector: Thames Valley
    • Sector: Tyne and Wear
    • Sector: UAE
    • Sector: West of Scotland
    • Sector: Yorkshire
  • Healthcare
  • Sector: Fire
  • Sector: Financial/general services
  • Sector: Energy
  • Education
  • Sector: Communications and media
  • Chemicals
  • Sector: Central government
  • Catering and leisure
  • Agriculture and forestry
  • Sector: Local government
  • Sector: IOSH Group
    • Sector: Financial Services
    • Sector: Sports Grounds and Events
    • Rural industries
    • Sector: railway
    • Public Services
    • Sector: Offshore
    • Sector: Hazardous Industries
    • Sector: Food and Drink
    • Sector: Fire Risk Management
    • Education
    • Construction
    • Sector: Aviation and Aerospace
Quick links:
  • Home
  • Categories
  • Lexicon

F is for FRAM

Open-access content Thursday 9th August 2018
From the archive:  Just so you know, this article is more than 3 years old.

Lexicon-F-is-for-FRAM

Conventional safety techniques assume a causal chain of events -- driving the forklift truck too fast caused the driver to hit the pedestrian, causing the injury. A simple investigation determines the cause was the operator driving too fast; a risk assessment determines what is needed to prevent that happening (speed limiters, supervision, inspection).

FRAM (the functional resonance analysis method) was developed by safety academic Erik Hollnagel to assess systems that are non-trivial and non-linear. In two scenarios the same thing occurs, but in the first it does not cause an accident -- driving fast ensures the order is delivered on time, and no one is hit; and in the second there is an accident.

The term "resonance" is more often used when talking about physical systems. A child on a playground swing learns quickly that if they kick their feet at the right moment they can extend the height of their arc. The child has found the swing's resonant frequency.

The collapse of the Tacoma Narrows Bridge in the US in 1940 (see original footage at bit.ly/1dHRHTL or watch it below) shows the destructive power of resonance. In 2000, the Millennium Bridge over the Thames in London had to be closed soon after opening because of excessive swaying caused by resonance from pedestrian movements. Dampers had to be retrofitted before the bridge could be used again.

Hollnagel does not argue that accidents are random, but that often the resonance has not been foreseen

Hollnagel does not argue that accidents are random, but that often the resonance has not been foreseen. We don't understand enough about how materials and people will behave in extreme conditions, or how that behaviour changes over time. Functional resonance arises from the normal ways a system works and can be better understood if we stop looking for the "root cause" of the accident.

"We have used FRAM to help organisations who wanted to understand why they were continuing to have incidents, despite a heavy investment in resources and despite best efforts to prevent drift into unwanted outcomes," says Helen Rawlinson, managing director of consultancy Art of Work. "FRAM helped them to understand the variance that exists in their normal working operations, not as a means to control, but to learn what the dependencies are and to understand how well-supported people were, or were not, to the variance in their work activities."

If you were drawing a standard flowchart, each function would be drawn as a box with one or more input and output. In FRAM, each function is drawn as a hexagon (see figure above), and can have four further aspects as well as inputs and outputs:

Precondition -- a system state that must be true, or conditions that must be checked before a function is carried out. Though an input activates the function, the precondition doesn't.

Resource -- something needed or used up when a function is carried out, such as energy, information, competence, tools or people.

Control -- something that supervises or regulates a function so that it results in the desired output, such as schedules, procedures, our own or management's expectations about how to do something.

Time -- though it could be considered as a resource and as a control, time has a special status. It can describe the order in which functions must be carried out, or that a function has to be started at a stated time, after an elapsed time, or completed before a particular time or within a stated duration.

Not every aspect must be described for every FRAM function, but each function will have at least an input or an output. The resulting FRAM diagram (below) can look like a particularly messy spider's web -- less tidy than fault and event trees -- but a better reflection of the complexity of real systems.

Rawlinson is convinced of the usefulness of the technique. "FRAM has successfully boosted the capacity of organisations we have helped and we continue to watch teams become more aware of the issues that exist before they become problematic."

Download a free FRAM visualiser tool at www.functionalresonance.com

FRAM diagram

FRAM-diagram

Watch: collapse of the Tacoma Narrows Bridge in the US in 1940

You may also be interested in...

 E is for ETTO

Tuesday 17th July 2018
Hollnagel explains that the ideas behind ETTO are far from new. He was writing about the limitations of human resources and the need for trade-offs before he coined the term in 2001, and long before the publication in 2009 of Efficiency-Thoroughness Trade-Off: why things that go right sometimes go wrong.
Open-access content

 G is for gross negligence manslaughter

Monday 17th September 2018
Although higher penalties are proposed, the offence of GNM in workplace fatalities is not new. Last year, an engineer was sent to prison for three and a half years when an electric gate he had installed fell on a client and killed her.
Open-access content

 D is for duty of care

Wednesday 20th June 2018
The question of to whom we owe a duty of care was extended by the “ginger beer” case of Donaghue v Stevenson in 1932. The initial judgment had been that Ms Donaghue could not seek compensation for her illness caused by the rotting snail found in the ginger beer bottle because she had not bought the drink herself.
Open-access content

 H is for Hawthorne effect

Monday 15th October 2018
Hawthorne Works was the name of a factory near Chicago in the US, operated by Western Electric in the early part of the 20th Century. Although Elton Mayo of the Harvard Business School is the name most associated with the Hawthorne effect, he wasn’t involved until 1928, four years into data collection.
Open-access content

 C is for common sense

Thursday 17th May 2018
Though humans have some instinctual fears that drive avoidance behaviour, these are limited. The classic 1960 visual cliff experiments (Gibson and Walk), which monitored infants’ behaviour beside a simulated drop – they were protected in fact by a glass sheet – were interpreted initially as evidence that all children share an innate sense that heights are dangerous.However, repeated variations of these tests conducted since suggest that even this sense is acquired by babies learning to crawl, walk, fall over and get up again.
Open-access content

 I is for interested party

Monday 12th November 2018
This reflects the requirement in the UK Health and Safety at Work Act for an employer or self-employed person to protect not just employees, but also “persons not in his employment who may be affected thereby”.
Open-access content

Latest from Lexicon

Lexicon: Z

 Z is for Zeigarnik

Friday 24th April 2020
We round off the alphabet by considering how to use the Russian psychologist's work in OSH
Open-access content
Y is for Yerkes-Dodson

 Y is for Yerkes-Dodson

Thursday 2nd April 2020
The strength of the stimulus as the experimental variable, with performance as the result.
Open-access content
x

 X is for gens X, Y and Z

Wednesday 4th March 2020
While it is no longer acceptable to assume that all men are stronger than all women, or that people of one colour have different personalities to those of another colour it is, it appears, entirely acceptable to declare that anyone born since 1980 is addicted to social media and will ‘challenge traditional hierarchical HSE systems’, while anyone born before that date is a luddite with no understanding of the modern age, but will be quite happy to toe the line.
Open-access content
Share
  • Twitter
  • Facebook
  • Linked in
  • Mail
  • Print

Latest Jobs

Senior Health and Safety Manager

Reading
Up to £65000.00 per annum + Great Car Allowance & Benefits
Reference
5452983

Regional Health and Safety Advisor

Northampton
Up to £53000 per annum + Travel & Excellent Benefits
Reference
5452982

Global Health, Safety and Environment Director

Up to £150000 per annum + Excellent Benefits
Reference
5452980
See all jobs »

Sign up for regular e-alerts

Receive the latest news and features, free to your inbox

Sign up

Subscribe to IOSH magazine

Receive the print edition straight to your door

Subscribe
IOSH Covers
​
FOLLOW US
Twitter
LinkedIn
YouTube
CONTACT US
Contact us
Tel +44 (0)20 7880 6200
​

IOSH

About IOSH
Become a member
IOSH Events
MyIOSH

Information

Privacy Policy
Terms & Conditions
Cookie Policy

Get in touch

Contact us
Advertise with us
Subscribe to IOSH magazine
Write for IOSH magazine

IOSH Magazine

Health
Safety
Management
Skills
IOSH Jobs

© 2023 IOSH • IOSH is not responsible for the content of external sites

ioshmagazine.com and IOSH Magazine are published by Redactive Media Group. All rights reserved. Reproduction of any part is not allowed without written permission.

Redactive Media Group Ltd, 71-75 Shelton Street, London WC2H 9JQ