Incident and Accident Investigation

Injuries and ill health cost organisations money. However, these are only one component of financial loss from accidents. Accidental damage to property, plant, products or the environment - as well as production losses or liabilities - also impose costs.

Over the years, there has been much research into the causes of accidents. One thing that is very clear from the research is that there are many more "near-miss" incidents than those which cause injury or property damage.

The following illustration shows the relationship between various types of incident:

Definitions:

"Accident", is an unplanned event that caused injury to a person, damage to property or an undesirable impact upon the environment.

"Near-miss incident", is an unplanned event that, under slightly different circumstances, may have caused injury to a person, damage to property or an undesirable impact upon the environment.

From the above triangle, it can be seen that, for every serious accident, there are 30 injuries. What is more staggering is that, for every serious accident, there are 600 "near-miss" incidents.

It is therefore essential that every time a "near-miss" occurs, a thorough investigation is carried out to ascertain the root cause of the incident. Once the cause has been identified, corrective action can be taken, thus reducing the likelihood that a given "near-miss" will occur again.

By examining the causes of all such outcomes, and by putting in place corrective measures, valuable lessons can be learned from the "near-misses". These lessons will help to reduce to possibility that a serious injury may occur.

NGT Safety Management provide the following services in relation to incident reporting and investigation:

• Development of reporting and investigation systems.
• Accident and incident investigation (usually in consultation with representatives from the organisation).
• Expert witness service.
• Statistical and trend analysis of incident data.
• Development of lead and lag "key performance indicators".
• Training and mentoring of incident investigators.

If you would like further details of our incident investigation service, please contact us.