The real value lies not in the technology itself, but in its ability to create unpredictability. It should confront learners with situations that refuse to follow a script. The point is not to eliminate all surprises, but to be ready to be surprised.
The Health and Safety Executive has long emphasised competence as a foundation of effective risk control. In today’s environment, competence must go beyond procedural compliance or technical proficiency. High Reliability Organisations, which operate in unforgiving settings yet maintain exceptional safety records, understand this.
Their culture is one of chronic unease. This is a constant readiness to question, to adapt, and to seek out weak signals of trouble. These qualities do not arise by chance. They are deliberately developed through training that challenges both the mind and the habits of the organisation.
Ultimately, the real test of training is not whether it prepares people for a known emergency, but whether it equips them to handle the emergency they never expected. The most valuable programmes leave participants not with the illusion that they have seen it all, but with the confidence, curiosity, and agility to think clearly when they have seen nothing like it before.
In those moments, safety will depend less on what has been memorised and more on the capacity to adapt, collaborate, and act decisively in the face of the unprecedented. As Weick and Sutcliffe have written, “High reliability is not the absence of errors, but the presence of systems that catch them before they escalate” (2015). Well-designed training is one of the most important of those systems, but only if it prepares us for the world as it is, and as it might yet become.
