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601 Essentials of Occupational Safety and Health
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601 Essentials of Occupational Safety and Health

Accident Analysis and Investigation

Accident analysis and investigation is a critical process. The purpose of the process is different, depending on who conducts it: The employer analyses accidents to fix their safety management systems, while OSHA investigates accidents to determine if the employer violated OSHA regulations. Do you see the difference?

Employees with hard hats and vests looking at an accident seen.
Analyze each event to discover surface and root causes for the accident.

An effective employer accident analysis process will include the following steps:

  1. Secure the accident scene to make sure things are not moved or removed.
  2. Collect facts about what happened by conducting interviews, taking photos/videos, making sketches, and observations.
  3. Develop a sequence of events to discover how the accident happened.
  4. Analyze each event in the sequence to discover the surface and root causes of the accident. Surface causes
  5. Develop recommendations for immediate corrective action and long-term system improvements.
  6. Write the accident report detailing findings.
Event Analysis
Analyze each event to uncover causes.

There are three levels of analysis that must be completed to make sure the accident analysis is effective:

  1. Conduct Injury Analysis to discover the direct cause of injury. This always involves the interaction between the hazard and employee exposure. For example, a burn injury is the result of an employee's hand coming into contact with a flame.
  2. Conduct Event Analysis to look for hazardous conditions and employee behaviors in each event that caused or contributed to the accident. For example, analysis discovered that the burn to the hand was caused by the employee forgetting to wear personal protective equipment.
  3. Conduct System Analysis to identify related root causes: those underlying management system design and implementation weaknesses that contributed to the accident. Look for inadequate policies, programs, plans, processes, procedures, and practices affecting general conditions and behaviors. For instance, the analysis uncovered that the employee was not wearing PPE because there was inadequate supplies.

Knowledge Check Choose the best answer for the question.

5-7. Which level of analysis is conducted to look for conditions or behaviors that caused or contributed to an accident?

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