By Ntombi Mazibuku, Head of SHERQ: SPMS
The start of the year is often spoken about as a reset. In operational environments, systems carry forward the condition they were left in. Equipment, procedures, and behaviours all arrive in January with history attached to them. That reality shapes risk long before new plans take effect.
From a SHERQ perspective, this makes the early months of the year decisive.
Safety, health, environmental control, risk, and quality are not influenced by intention. They are influenced by how work resumes. The first quarter shows whether controls have been properly re-established or whether they are assumed to be intact. In high-risk environments, assumption is one of the most reliable precursors to failure.
Early-year pressure tends to surface in predictable ways. Work begins moving before procedures are fully re-embedded. Permit systems are treated as administrative steps rather than protective controls. Supervision is stretched as multiple activities restart in parallel. None of these conditions appear unsafe in isolation. Together, they reduce the system’s ability to respond when conditions change.
Clarity is one of the most effective early-year controls. Clear roles reduce unsafe improvisation. Clear authority prevents hesitation when risk increases. Clear escalation paths shorten response time. When clarity weakens, informal decision-making fills the gap, often without full awareness of consequences.
Leadership presence also carries particular weight at the beginning of the year. Safety systems perform differently depending on who is present when decisions are made. When leaders remain operationally visible, standards tend to hold. When leadership is distant, deviations become normalised. Presence is not symbolic. It is a functional risk control.
Environmental and health disciplines require similar attention during ramp-up periods. Environmental incidents often develop gradually through small lapses in housekeeping, waste handling, or spill management. Health risks emerge when fatigue, medical fitness, or exposure controls are deprioritised as pace increases. Addressing these early prevents cumulative risk later in the year.
Quality underpins all of these domains. Poor quality work creates rework. Rework increases exposure. Each unnecessary return to an asset introduces additional risk that could have been avoided through correct execution the first time. Quality assurance is, therefore a preventative SHERQ measure rather than a downstream correction.
The standards that are reinforced early in the year tend to persist. The ones that are compromised early rarely recover once pressure builds. For those responsible for SHERQ, the task at the start of the year is not to introduce new language or targets, but to ensure that control is applied consistently from the first job onward. That is how a stable year is built.
