Incident investigation & analysis

Summary

Gain an understanding of incident investigation and analysis, including why we need to investigate incidents and how to effectively carry out the different stages of incident investigation and analysis.

Incident investigation and reporting help to identify hazards, enforce the safety culture and reduce the frequency of incidents.  

This course will explore the different stages of incident investigation:  immediate actions in the event of an incident; initiating the investigation; collecting, organising and analysing data; identifying corrective and preventive actions; reporting the incident and learning valuable lessons from it, at the personal and organisational level, to improve safety performance.   

Other principles explored in the course are: 

• Understanding the events that led up to an accident can help to determine the cause. Each accident should be treated as a learning opportunity. 
• Once the cause of the accident is determined, corrective actions can be taken to prevent the same or similar losses from occurring again. 
• Discovering patterns in accidents may help determine if procedures need to be altered to keep people and property safe. 
• Sharing information and discoveries helps to prevent future accidents and can reduce risks for others. 

The approach to this course is defined by the fact that we learn by ‘doing’; there are numerous activities and worked examples which complement and embed the learning.

Who should attend?

Managers, supervisors and HSE professionals who may be called on to participate in incident investigations.  

How will I benefit?

After the course you will be able to: 

• Demonstrate a thorough grounding in the underlying theories behind accident cause analysis 
• Apply the investigation and analysis process to determine the sequence of events and the causes of an incident 
• Critically analyse published incident and accident reports including the recommendations 

Key topics

• Introduction 
• Immediate actions in the event of an accident  
• Planning the investigation 
• Collecting data 
• Data organisation/analysis 
• Corrective actions 
• Concluding the analysis