Incident
Investigation -- Tips, Techniques & Trivia
It's a new year and I'm still trying to loose
the ten pounds from my last year's resolution, so I won't be making
any resolutions this year.
If you manage a health and safety program or are
simply doing a lot of investigations and you've been thinking
about doing something to improve your investigation program then
read on...
Jeff
Improving Your Investigation Program
No doubt you are well aware of some problem areas
are such as reporting, or form completions that aren't going well.
Pull the last six months of investigation reports and take a critical
look at the process. Listed below are some ideas that might make
for measurable goals and improvements. It's unlikely you can turn
around your investigation program in just one year, but why not
start? Pick two or three areas where you think you can really
make a difference.
- Complete _____ near miss investigations per
month
- Provide/request feedback to/from other investigators
- Strike a committee to review investigation
policy and procedures
- Develop a Major Accident Response Plan
- Create an investigation team
- Conduct a team based investigation once per
quarter
- Train _____ investigators
- Develop a user friendly investigation report
form
- Conduct 3,6 & 9 month reviews of past
recommendations to see if they are effective
- Develop content for safety meetings for all
employees on "protecting the scene"
- Create a corporate investigation kit
8D
Problem Solving Process
Here's a problem solving (investigation) tool
used by National Semiconductor to identify, correct and eliminate
the recurrence of quality problems. While it's quality based,
it would also work well for recurring incidents in the workplace.
8D is a problem-solving methodology for product
and process improvement. It is structured into eight disciplines,
emphasizing team synergy. The team as whole is better and smarter
than the quality sum of the individuals. Each discipline is supported
by a checklist of assessment questions, such as "what is
wrong with what", "what, when, where, how much".
The Eight Disciplines
View the Remainder of article (8D
Problem Solving Process)
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