A Safety Accident Investigation - It Should Be Everyones Priority

Accidents happen in the workplace. It's an unfortunate but true fact. In despite of all the hard work companies do to avoid accidents, occasionally something goes wrong. When it does it's important to conduct a thorough investigation into what went wrong. After all, it's even more of a tragedy if someone else gets hurt or killed in the same way and there was something that could have been done differently to stop it.

The cause of some accidents is obvious, but that's not always the case. By following clear and concise steps, investigators can uncover underlying causes of a mishap. An Accident Investigation has two main goals. One is to determine the cause of the accident. The other is to use this information to prevent similar accidents from happening in the future. Everyone in a company should be ready to help investigators solve the investigation. While this may be difficult for some employees, they need to be reminded of the ultimate goal of the investigation - a safer workplace.

Many accidents seem to happen for obvious reasons. A worker was not following procedures and working unsafely or hazardous conditions at a worksite seemed to be to blame. But, sometimes the there are less obvious, underlying reasons that contribute to the accident and that is why an accident investigation needs to be conducted. A goal of any investigation is not to assign blame but to prevent the accident from happening again.

The first step to prepare for an investigation is to make sure injured persons are being cared for and then secure the area by putting up safety tape. The investigators need an undisturbed view of the accident. A lot like a crime scene you see on TV. They need to take picture, measurements etc... and the safety tape will help preserve the scene.

A technique called root-cause analysis is often used in an investigation. An accident is usually not the cause of a single event. Many times there are multiple factors led up to by weeks and even months of contributing occurrences. This type of analysis seeks to get to this "root cause" that may not be obvious. An investigator will need to interview workers that witnessed the accident and even workers who did not. Many times a worker who has a job in the area will have valuable insight into what happened. Cooperation from everyone in the company is imperative to a successful investigation.

There are three basic areas that investigations look at - policies, equipment and training. The root cause could lead to any of these three and once it does one of these three areas will need to be changed. A new policy or update to an existing policy, a repair or upgrade of equipment or an upgrade in training. In most cases, though, all three need to be changed.

A simple example of a root-cause analysis is a slip and fall on a wet floor. At first glance, the wet floor would be the cause, but it goes deeper than that. Floors need to be cleaned, so there are always going to be wet floors. A warning sign could have prevented the accident, so a policy needs to be put in place requiring warning signs on wet floors and training needs to take place to make sure workers understand this. The final analysis would involve equipment, policies and training.

While a lot can be learned from accidents, we can learn also learn from "near misses" as well. Those incidents that didn't involve an accident but could have easily had terrible result. Make sure that near-misses are always reported so that your supervisor can address them. The information learned from a near-miss is far less expensive than what is learned from an accident. Remember, prevention is always the best cure.

No matter how safe workers do their jobs, an accident can always happen. Make sure you follow the basic steps to enable accident investigators to do their job correctly and find the "root cause" of the incident. An accident investigation can create a safer workplace and that's good for everyone. Who knows it might save a life some day.

Robert Sullivan is a VP for Workplace Safety Videos. Workplace Safety Videos is a distributor of safety videos and safety DVDs.