Reporting & Investigating Incidents
Safety Management System 2007		SMS ST054 2007

A good incident investigation tries to answer these questions:

• What happened?
• When did it happen?
• Where did it happen?
• Who was involved?
• Why did it happen?
• How can it be prevented from happening again?

When these questions are answered for all incidents, accidents and near misses, patterns often emerge and preventable causes are discovered. But the patterns may not be true unless information acquired during the investigation is complete and accurate. The observations of co-workers, as well as from other employees that were directly involved, can be critical. It helps if everyone will:

• Make mental or written notes about the accident as soon as possible.
• Avoid talking to others before talking to an investigator, as this may confuse the facts.
• Answer all questions about the incident as accurately as possible.
• Take the investigation seriously.

The first thing to do when an incident occurs is to make sure the worker’s injuries are treated. The next step is to carefully investigate the events surrounding the incidents. The reason for investigations is not to place blame on anyone, but to learn what happened – so similar incidents can be prevented in the future. All employees play an important role in the investigation process.

All accidents, incidents and near misses should be reported to your supervisor immediately, regardless of how minor it may seem. The study of near misses can help prevent more serious incidents, where someone is actually injured. Such investigations needn’t always be extensive, but records of near misses often indicate trends or hazardous conditions that can be corrected.