Kelvin TOP-SET Incident Investigation & Problem Solving developments

We are into the third quarter of the year in 2019 already and it is hard to believe. This year it has been harder than usual in Scotland to spot the season from the weather! We have had a very busy and eventful year so far with courses, once again, running in interesting places like Romania, India and Ghana. There are over 40 countries on our order book. We recently counted them on the request of a client, so we are quite certain. There were 43 we think!

Our tutors are kept very busy teaching courses while our educational development department at base constantly works on the material to ensure evolution in the light of thought-sharing and the current needs of our client body. Our standards and accreditation depend on attention to detail and consistency. Consequently, the highlight of this month was our CPD (Continuous Professional Development) event held at our Ayrshire Headquarters to up-skill our tutors, and to provide an opportunity for sharing experience. It was deemed a great success and the Tuesday night dinner was fun and very useful.

Many topics were covered during the days’ discussions on both courses and investigations. The usefulness of sharing and building on experiences cannot be overestimated. There is great commitment and a common agenda among this body of people, our tutors, who come from many fields and sectors.

Many topics were touched upon, but one emerged from our tutors’ experiences on courses. From time to time they are asked about other ‘investigation systems’. What should they say? What emerged is this: we can refer to other systems, but do not allow ourselves to get sucked into detailed discussions. If people are interested and really want to engage like that, they can be referred to the office where a member of the development team will be happy to help. Otherwise, we need to convey that we are a system of over 30 years’ pedigree and worldwide use. And we know, without question, that TOP-SET works!

So, our job is not to compete with other systems. Rather we attempt, successfully we are told, to work on our own proprietary investigation system, which provides tools to assist and guide users through an investigation, however minor or serious. Our aim is to de-jargonise, to interpret, to clarify and make investigation – and Root Cause Analysis – possible to carry out successfully, from top to bottom of a company. We aim to make something that is difficult, easy to use at the ‘coal face’. The TOP-SET system endeavours to enable consistency of results to be achieved and, consequently, to have enough accurate data to make trending meaningful. Lack of obfuscation also allows TOP-SET to work for international companies where translation is more than just desirable.

The other point to emerge from our tutors’ meeting is that the word ‘investigation’ has negative connotations; something ‘bad’ has to happen first. We have long known and understood this at TOP-SET; it was one of the hurdles in the early days, but not so any longer. TOP-SET is a ‘thinking system’, applicable to any problem. Our tutors have taken this concept away to emphasise. But perhaps it is worth further exploration in the next newsletter!!!
Regards
Lorna Ramsay
Group Operations Director
Director of Learning and Tutor Development
Kelvin TOP-SET Group of Companies