The Operators' System of Instruments: A Risk Management Tool

Previous analyses of the working activity of professionals in charge of safety in industrial companies, also called preventionists, have shown that the purpose of this activity consists of establishing a process of “pragmatization of regulations.” This is an adaptation of the regulations, relative to processes from the texts of law of general order towards their implementation in a context [1]. We have analyzed these processes according to the instrumental approach of Rabardel [2]. In this perspective, we focus on the safety workers’ systems of instruments [3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8]. These resources, developed according to the workers’ experience, render their activity more reliable. They are also of heterogeneous character: simultaneously material, symbolic or of cognitive order. The systems of instruments present certain properties, in particular being structured according to the experience and skills of the workers, but also characterized by the complementarities and redundancies of their functions, following the example of a security system; this takes into account the elements of the context, the constraints and the resources of the activity [3]. In the following case study, we present the system of instruments of a preventionist, in which the regulations function as a “pivot instrument” of this system. It is from the regulations that the worker establishes the diagnosis of the safety level of his or her company and develops his or her preventive and formative actions [9]. To conclude, we develop a discussion about the design of the preventionists’ training.