Reliability 4 Life
Our Origin…
"The advancement in safety science and the origin of the Reliability 4 life solutions have revolutionized the way organizations approach safety and high reliability".
- Dr. Kevin Joseph, Healthcare Executive
High Reliability Organizations (HRO) and the principles applied in HRO's were discovered by researchers such as Karl Weick and Kathleen Sutcliffe. Industries that "invented" the techniques, skills, and approach to analyzing loss events, included nuclear system engineers and engineers in the military and commercial aviation industries. These industries are referred to as technology-based systems. They are highly complex and need to perform in an ultra-safe manner at all times. Nuclear power and aviation industries spent decades improving their foundational processes, procedures, etc. During the late 90's early 2000's, their focus shifted to improving human error and safety culture, creating high functioning safety management systems. The results from the combination of strategies led these industries to be researched and eventually identified as "High Reliability Organizations"...on a never-ending journey of continuous improvement.
In the late 1990's engineers from the nuclear power industry including Craig Clapper PE, began to translate the principles, techniques, and skills, to human-based systems (the healthcare industry). The engineers and other field experts who worked alongside them discovered the complexity of these systems is even greater. Requiring the healthcare industry to "fix" their broken systems (processes, procedure/policy usage, environmental spaces, and technology) while simultaneously re-engineering their culture to support human performance.
R4L brings to the healthcare industry cross-industry experience and a direct lineage to the originators of the Nuclear Power safety management system through our founder, Craig Clapper, PE. Mr. Clapper led a dedicated team of passionate experts in safety and high reliability including R4L founder, Tami Strong, to document the first healthcare safety management system in text, ZERO Harm: How to Achieve Patient and Workforce Safety in Healthcare. The book, Zero Harm, captures the stories of healthcare organization's successes as they work to create strong safety management systems to achieve highly reliable results.
Together Clapper and Strong have performed as adjunct faculty and published works for leadership quality and safety college programs. They have partnered with former client-executives to help them achieve their life goal of reducing harm... joining members on podcasts, co-authoring articles, and providing resources for their own books!