Safety, Environment & Legislation (SEL)

Publication Details

Guidance on the Investigation and Reporting of Incidents

Only by completing a thorough examination will there be a possibility of determining the true root cause of an incident. This guidance from IMCA aims to reflect current practice for setting up incident investigation and reporting procedures and, primarily, to examine how these may be improved to help identify root causes.

The guidance seeks to assist companies by setting out procedures that will help in investigation. It can be used by companies constructing their own procedural arrangements and by those actually charged with the task of investigating and reporting an incident.

Anyone in the workforce can benefit from guidance on incident reportin - even if someone is not the person compiling the report, they will understand the process better if it is explained why they need to provide evidence and why the scope of information they need to provide might be far wider than that which might immediately be apparent.

Contents

1. Overview
• Preface
• Introduction
• General principles of investigation
• What procedures should there be?
• An incident occurs - what should happen next?
2. Investigation and reporting
• Interviewing personnel
• Site investigation
• Initial analysis
• Subsequent analysis
• Other considerations
• IMCA incident reporting
3. Appendices
• Sample investigation levels
• Typical flowchart symbols
• Sample company incident reporting form
• Sample incident managment review report format
• Sample company investigation report format
• Sample incident flowchart
• Sample near-miss reporting form
• Sample format for 'infringement of safety zone' report procedure
• Sample definitions of incident terminology
• Sample company incident classification scheme
• Sample insurance reporting procedure
• Example introduction for a privileged document