Achieving incident control

The purpose of this module is to provide you with tools to effectively manage your company’s SHEQ programme.  

It also provides an understanding of and insight into: 

• The consequences that incidents can have on people, the organisation and the environment. 

• Those factors which cause incidents to occur and what can be done to prevent them from happening again. 

The aim of this module is to provide you with the necessary information and activities to enable you to:

Interpret the causes and consequences of incidents by:

1. Comprehending the achievement of incident control.
2. Interpreting the consequences of incidents.
3. Discussing incident ratio studies.
4. Interpreting the causation model.
5. Examining the immediate causes of incidents.
6. Examining the root causes of incidents.
7. Interpreting inadequate systems control.
8. Interpreting inadequate risk assessment.

Overwhelming evidence exists which indicates that preventing incidents is best achieved by implementing a management system designed to control losses. 

The emergence of regulations, codes and standards focusing on a management systems approach and self-regulation also provides ample evidence that the time has come for a risk based systems approach to preventing incidents.

While some believe that the best way to achieve incident control is through imposition of legislation, focusing on a prescriptive and technological approach, there is also an emerging willingness by people in industry and business to try a new and complementary approach.  

This new approach encourages companies to manage their SHEQ programmes effectively through good management systems.  

As stated in the overview, this module focuses on providing companies with the tools to effectively manage their SHEQ programmes.  It provides an understanding of the consequences that incidents can have on people, the organisation and the environment.  It also provides an understanding of those factors which cause incidents to occur and through this understanding, provides insights of what can be done to prevent them from happening again. 

The fundamental causes of incidents are failures of the systems of work, not substandard acts and conditions.

These substandard acts and conditions are merely signs of underlying problems.  Focusing on systems and work processes yields long-term improvements in incident prevention – whether incidents result in harm to people, property, processes or the environment or not.  

Some even go so far as to say that similar systems can be used to control harm to people, property, processes and the environment, as well as quality related incidents (non-conformities).  

Even though the focus of this course is on safety, health and the environment, many of the concepts can be translated directly into the quality field and can be used to assist in managing that discipline as well.

To understand the causes of incidents and their consequences, it is important to understand and use a common language. 

The following practical definitions explain terms in a manner which can be easily understood and applied by employees and managers performing operating work. 

A MANAGER is a person responsible for a workplace, a work activity or people. 

To manage any activity properly the following work needs to be done:

In the present business climate, the term LEADER is often used in place of the term MANAGER.  Leading is a part of managing, but alone, it is not managing.  An effective leader is not necessarily an effective manager; therefore, this course uses the terms manager and management rather than leader and leadership.   

Managers are those people who Plan, Organise, Lead and Control work needed to accomplish the company’s goals and objectives.  Please keep in mind that everyone is a potential manager.

The term manager refers to anyone responsible for specific work processes or systems, regardless of the person’s pay grade, title or salary structure.

Three terms are used throughout the module to describe events which could or do result in unintended harm: Incident, Accident and Near-miss.  Practical definitions of each term follow.

An Incident is an unplanned event which could or does result in harm.

   In the context of a SHEQ system, harm occurs to people, property, processes or the environment; and it means that someone or something is injured, damaged, hurt or impacted upon.  

As mentioned in the definition, an incident could have two possible outcomes:  one results in unintended harm and the other results in no harm.

From now on we will usually refer to those events that result in, or could have resulted in, unintended harm as incidents.  Occasionally we will also refer to accidents if it helps clarify the specific type of event we are discussing. 

There are two types of incidents, namely:

1. Accidents, and  

2. Near-misses. 

An incident which results in harm is called an Accident. 

An accident – type incident is an unplanned event which results in harm.

There are several important characteristics of an accident which, when understood, will help prevent them from occurring.  

Accidents result from a contact or contacts with energy or substances above the threshold limit of the body, structure or environment.  

Energy is typically exchanged in the form of acoustical, machine power, potential, chemical, electrical, pressure, thermal, kinetic, noise, radiation, etc.

A NEAR-MISS-type incident is an unplanned event, which under slightly different circumstances, could have resulted in harm. 

In the context of a SHEQ system the harm is to people, property, processes, or the environment.  We use the term near-miss in this course when the events barely missed causing an accident.  Some may choose to call these events near-accidents or near-hits, however, since the term near-miss is so widely used, we will refer to these events as near-misses throughout the course. 

Incidents and accidents are inadequately controlled events, not only unplanned events.  Effective SHEQ programmes anticipate incidents and accident scenarios and plan to mitigate their outcomes through such things as medical treatment facilities, emergency response teams and fire brigades, spill contingency and control plans and other structures.  

Accidents result in harm, not only to people, but to processes, property and the environment.  Incidents do not only relate to injuries.  Injuries are only one consequence of an incident.  In fact, experience shows that there are more property damage and other incidents than injury and illness incidents.