REASON CONSULTANT SERVICES

REASON RCA is a world-class tool and method that has been used for decades to help lead teams to investigate and discover solutions related to some of the world’s most critical and public incidents.

The 2003 blackout in the USA, the Space shuttle, the US Gulf oil spill- these and many other incidents in part or whole relied on REASON tools and consultants to aid the investigation and steer efficiently the team to conduct a thorough and complete investigation and report.

Yet, this same tool and method (and the consultants using them) have led the investigations for billions of loss and untold injury with general industry. These consultants are world-renown and have the real-world skills to lead any team within any industry.

These same REASON professionals are available to assist you with your organization’s specific incidents as 3-rd party facilitators or they can assist you in designing an internal RCA program as part of your overall Quality, Safety, or maintenance programs.

However you use REASON consultants in your organization you can count on the highest level of professionalism and world-class experience.

Contact (CLICK HERE) us to ask questions about REASON RCA consulting services and rates.

Critical Events

The President and the US Congress demanded analysis and answers to how an electrical power outage cascaded across the continent’s east coast to shut down the financial, operations and nerve centers of two countries. Homeland Security issues dominated early concerns. REASON analysts and REASON technology were called upon by the U. S. Department of Energy to head up and coordinate the international root cause analysis team’s effort to uncover the systemic causes of this national crisis. Hundreds of engineers, operations personnel and technical professionals were brought together to investigate, analyze and model the root causes of that critical event applying REASON technology and software systems.

REASON experts served as the root cause analysis command center for that project, directing and identifying the specific needs for particular data, monitoring and assessing incoming data, pushing questions out into the field for answers and modeling validated data to construct a REASON model of the myriad of causal details that finally generated the substance of the subsequent report presented to the U. S. Congress.

While your problem probably will not involve Congress, or at least we hope for your sake that it does not, you may none-the-less be faced with a critical problem that calls for quick answers and substantial investigation of the underlying causes and solutions. Decision Systems, Inc. has the expertise, experience, personnel, tools and services to work with your professionals to discover the root causes and solutions to your operations problems.

Many world class organizations in both the public and private sector have called upon REASON and the unique capabilities of REASON for expert, third-party analyses of problems ranging from the threat of nuclear toxic waste spills, to failure of a national electrical power grid, to process equipment failure, to legal challenges and compliance issues.

 Fatalities and Injuries

When fatalities and/or multiple injuries occur, compliance and analysis situations take on a life of their own. Third party examiners, compliance officers, media and public scrutiny become critical issues which must be managed by the organization. When such loss events occur, there are many sound reasons for bringing a REASON REASON Team aboard early.

Having REASON’s worldwide reputation and expertise associated with your root cause analysis project brings credibility and acceptance to your investigation activities. REASON coordinates your analysis, prepares and provides you with the highest level professional analysis reports, both to inform and counsel your management, and as a resource for your reports and documentation to outside organizations. Making REASON a member of your team provides a third-party expert witness resource, professional consulting services, and world class analysis capabilities.

The following is an example of how REASON and REASON might come into play in the protection of your organization when compliance or legal issues are involved. A major organization had just suffered an event in which a problem within a cryogenic process had resulted in one fatality and the severe burning of several employees. The organization immediately notified OSHA and REASON. In hours their management was discussing with OSHA Compliance Officers what had happened and the progress status of their root cause analysis in process. At the end of the day, REASON, working with the organization’s safety and operations staff, was able to show the OSHA Area Director and Compliance Officers exactly how the event had occurred, and able to demonstrate with a REASON model and analysis report that the tragedy was in no way an issue of negligence on the part of the organization. Instead, the organization through conducting the analysis had pinpointed an opportunity to go beyond the existing OSHA Standards in order to improve and maximize prevention and control. No citations were issued.

When you can show a judge and jury, third-party examiners and officials, compliance panels and review committees exactly how problems occurred, so that they can see and validate for themselves the accuracy and completeness of the data, organizations can manage and retain control of those crisis situations that without such capabilities can take on a life of their own.

Major Loss Events

Many important problems must receive attention and be dealt with professionally; but some transcend the usual level of investigation, root cause analysis and reporting. These ‘mega’ problems get their definition by the national scope, population and infrastructure impact and the political consequences. Events of this caliber are set apart by the complexity of the factors, the criteria by which the analysis is conducted, the degree of validation and coordination of data, the amount of public and media focus, and the level of documentation and reporting required.

For example, when the U. S. Congress demanded immediate answers to the causes of a cascading electric power crisis that blacked out the entire U.S. east coast and parts of Canada in 2003. Hundreds of engineers, operations personnel, compliance personnel and operations managers were brought together into one international team to investigate uncover and analyze the systemic causes of that national crisis that had profound national homeland security issues. The U. S. Department of Energy and the North American Electric Reliability Council called upon Decision Systems, Inc, its distributor Cooper Power Systems. And REASON Technology to head up and coordinate the root cause analysis project and international root cause analysis team.

The complexity of the causal threads, the volume of causal data and their relationships, the exacting criteria for accuracy and completeness, the intense scrutiny of processes, procedures and systems, the need for on-going validation in the field, and the need for verifiable, supportable and exact documentation and reporting . . . all combine in the analysis scope of such events to require only the most objective and effective root cause analysis tools and professional skills.

REASON has the prerequisite experience, expertise, tools and personnel to professionally manage the root cause analyses of major problems.

QA and Maintenance

It is not unusual for the management group of an organization to find that it is dealing with a major operations quality problem, and to decide to bring in an outside expert to assist in finding a solution. Sometimes, they will have already made several attempts at getting a handle on the issue, other times the results of the problem are just too critical to risk recurrence while seeking to solve the problem internally. REASON often is called upon to provide this type and level of problem-solving consulting service.

REASON root cause analysis methodology is ideally suited for examining a complex problem for all of the internally generated causes that come into play. REASON’s disciplined inquiry process, with criteria for accuracy and completeness, produces analyses that pinpoint each internal systemic source of the problem. Our expert analysts team up with your personnel to uncover root causes, to compare solution options and to develop cost-effective, practical action plans.

A unique aspect of REASON – REASON consulting services is the ability of our expert analysts to discover pervasive hidden causal influences that impact operations on a daily basis. Sometimes these hidden root causes are associated with major processes and primary issues. However, often these pervasive causes are the little, seemingly small issues that may be overlooked or considered insignificant during your normal problem solving activities. Capability to uncover pervasive causal influences comes from the REASON inquiry process itself. Because REASON validates the completeness of the root cause analysis process at each step, the resulting causal model is an exact record of the sequential causal systems, big and small, that have produced the problem.

Seemingly little issues that quietly and constantly interact with other systems throughout the operation to contribute to create delays, scrap, rework, safety and maintenance issues and overall quality problems in your on-going operations can be avenues to dramatic improvements. By definition, every time one of those pervasive systemic issues is uncovered, the impact upon quality can be broad. The good news is that because such issues are usually seated in how things are being done in your operation, rather than being equipment, personnel or materials issues, the costs associated with the solutions are usually modest. Thus you get a big bang for a small buck.

This simple two pronged philosophy for operations improvement translates into directed resolve of immediate issues, as-well-as proactive problem solving that nips developing systemic problems before they can grow and interact to produce crises.

REASON has the expertise, experience, personnel and tools to provide early response services in crisis, and sound consulting support to aid in developing and sustaining your operations improvement activities and processes.