Gary Ganson, CIH, CSP, asks why is it important to investigate an accident. He suggests that the goal of an accident investigation is to learn from the events that occurred with the goal of preventing them from occurring again. He also suggests that the best results can be achieved by conducting a root cause analysis as well as tracking near miss events.
When undertaking a root cause analysis, the person responsible for conducting the incident investigation should be the direct supervisor. Once the supervisor has identified the parties involved, he or she needs to bring them together to discuss what they observed, heard, or believed may have occurred.
The investigation follows the basic five Ws of who, what, where, why, and when in order to determine what happened, what the outcomes were, and what equipment was damaged. It is also important to take lots of photos as soon as possible to add to the file on the ongoing investigation. What the incident investigation is trying to achieve is to comprehend the contributing factors to the event, such as what machinery was implicated, or if a human error was the cause, without finger pointing.
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