Accidents incident prevention process

An accident/incident prevention process is as simplistic as it sounds. Within the text of this book the elements are provided for such a process. On the people side of this process, employers must commit themselves and all facets of management. The leadership for this process comes from management. This does not mean that the workforce should not be part of the process. The involvement of employees must be incorporated into the process in order to elicit a commitment and buy-in to the prevention effort. This is an important motivational factor for employees. 

Communication is critical in providing feedback to all involved on areas that have improved and those that need further attention. Reinforcement should be used to convey what has been working effectively to prevent incidents and implement any corrective action while continuing to evaluate. Update and improve the accident/ incident prevention process. 

There is nothing earthshakingly new in the accident/incident prevention arena. Basic accident/incident prevention techniqnes espoused in this book have been used and modified over decades. Eew, if any, dramatically new approaches have been devised using more modem techniques. Thus, accident investigation has always been accident investigation, no matter the words nsed. However, the tools and processes utilized for accident prevention have experienced modification and evolution as accident prevention has become an integral part of the loss control initiatives of companies. 

Trend analysis can be confused or invalidated by a sample that is too small. If the charting or analysis is limited only to major incidents, there will often be too few within a period to arrive at meaningful conclusions. For example, a facility with one thousand employees may experience only one or two serious incidents per year, and several years worth of data would be needed to make any meaningful statistical analysis. Minor incidents and near misses can be as useful in trend analysis and preventive prediction as major incidents. All process incidents should be reported, classified, and investigated as appropriate. The severity of an incident is frequently more a function of chance than actual fundamental system differences among accidents and near misses. 

Thorough and effective analyses of workplace incidents are critical components of a comprehensive safety management system. Yet, many incident analysis processes (i.e., accident investigations) fall short. They frequently fail to identify and resolve the real root causes of injuries, process incidents and near misses. Because the true root causes of incidents are within the system, the system must change to prevent the incident from happening again. 

The analysis of industry-related hazards and the accident/incidents they cause are an important step in the overall process of reducing occupation-related injuries, illnesses, and deaths. Only after a systematic look at the hazards and accidents can you hope to integrate the accident prevention techniques and tools that can have an impact on a company s safety and health initiative. 

One company s pipeline team, comprised of a first-level supervisor and other personnel responsible for operating and maintaining the pipeline system, established an objective of developing a more effective approach to serious-incident prevention based on the eight-element process model. The team s assessment of risks included evaluating causes of past U.S. pipeline accidents. Department of Transportation (DOT) data (Fig. 18.5) identify third-party damage as the most frequent cause of pipeline incidents, followed by defective equipment or repair, external corrosion, internal corrosion, and operator error. The team s thorough evaluation of potential risks has helped ensure that the appropriate tasks and safe... 

Thus, in a fleet safety program, it is important to select the best operators for the job. The operator is vital to the prevention of accidents, incidents, vehicle damage, and injuries. Careful selection of the operator is paramount to an effective fleet safety program. The selection process should involve access to the operator s past employment history, driving record (including accidents), accommodations, or awards, as well as previous experience, if any, on your type of equipment. 

Placing too much emphasis on injury-producing events but not focusing on potentially serious close call incidents can result in unreliable effective assessments. Rather than relying solely on injury rates or other postevent assessments, organizations could use a broader hazard control audit process. This management style audit would address several key components of the accident prevention process. The audit forms would help evaluators rate each component against prepublished... 

Many accidents have occuiTed because changes were made in plants or processes and these changes had unforeseen side effects. In this chapter a number of such incidents are described. How to prevent similar changes in the future is discussed. Some of the incidents are taken from References 1 and 2, where others are described as well. 

A. Kalelkar, Investigation of Large Magnitude Incidents Bhopal as a Case Study, Preventing Major Chemical and Related Process Accidents, Symposium Series No. 110, Institution of Chemical Engineers, Rugby, UK, 1988. 

Major chemical process incidents are often preceded by multiple warning symptoms in the months, days, or hours before the incident. These symptoms may be occurrences that are called near misses, but what exactly is a near miss A near miss is an incident that presents an opportunity to learn valuable information that may prevent future accidents. 

The research role in safety and loss prevention goes far beyond identifying hazards. Research is instrumental in the discovery of less hazardous materials and in the development of less hazardous processes. For example, research at Dow led to a new processing technique which reduced the hazard of a process by reducing the maximum inventory of instantaneously hazardous materials. (See more detailed description in Ref. 3.) While inventory itself is rarely the source of an accident, the severity of human injury and property damage is largely determined by the quantity of hazardous materials released by the incident. 

Organization for Economic Coordination and Development (OECD), Guidance on Safety Performance Indicators related to Chemical Accident Prevention, Preparedness and Response for Industry, 2nd Edition, OECD Environment, Health and Safety Publications, Series on Chemical Accidents No. 19, Paris, 2008 Phimister, J. et al., Near-Miss Incident Management in the Chemical Process Industry, Risk Analysis, Vol. 23, No. 3,2003... 

But for long-term improvement, a causal analysis—CAST or something similar— needs to be performed on the process that created the flawed design and that process improved. If the development process was flawed, perhaps in the hazard analysis or design and verification, then fixing that process can prevent a large number of incidents and accidents in the future. 

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