Incident Insight, Your Partner in Incident Investigation

Welcome to Incident Insight, your companion in incident investigation! Keep reading to learn about incident investigation, our software, and more.

What is incident investigation?

Every workplace has its own hazards. Safety measures are put into place to reduce risks and prevent hazards turning into incidents. But what happens if these measures are not enough, leading to near misses, or worse… serious incidents? That’s when an incident investigation comes in. As the name suggests, an investigation is designed to understand how and why things went wrong, and ultimately to prevent similar major incidents in future

As Trevor Kletz once said, “If you think safety is expensive, try an accident.” The goal of investigating incidents is to learn what went wrong and how this can be prevented in future. Past incidents can’t be undone, but we can see them as valuable lessons to improve our safety, saving future costs and consequences. This is also an opportunity to identify hazards and weaknesses in your operations.

Instead of blaming individuals, focus on accident prevention. So how do we begin investigating incidents?

The 5 Why’s Technique

One tried-and-tested method used in investigating incidents is the 5 Whys, which helps the investigator identify and understand the root cause of the problem. This approach doesn’t require the use of any complex math — just clear, logical thinking. We simply ask “why” repeatedly until we uncover the root cause (See Figure 1). For example, you might start by asking, “Why was there incorrect use of machinery?” (See Figure 2) After a few more “whys”, we discover that the real issue is a poor company attitude towards safety & maintenance of equipment. The aim is to uncover the root cause through asking why 5 times or fewer.

Elements of an incident insight diagram

There are six main elements used in an incident insight diagram: threats, events, consequences, barriers, causes, and root causes. Note that different organisations may use different terminology, this can be edited within the main settings of Incident Insight

1. Threats could be the result of a failure, an external influence, or operational issues. They can include system malfunctions, human errors, or external factors that increase the likelihood of an event occurring.
2. Events may be an a) accident, which is an event that results in injury or ill health or b) near miss, an event that has potential to cause injury or ill health.
3. Consequences represent the undesirable outcomes that could result from an event. These can range from environmental damage to injuries, damaged reputation, or even loss of life.
4. Barriers are measures put in place to either prevent a threat from causing an event (prevention barrier) or to mitigate the consequences of an event (mitigation barrier). Barriers can be physical equipment, procedures, or actions carried out by people. They are designed to intervene in a scenario to either stop an event from occurring or to limit its impact. A large part of incident investigations is determining which barriers failed and why.
5. Causes are the reasons why an event happens, or a barrier fails, e.g. the guard is missing, the employee slips etc. There may be several causes identified in any one event.
6. Root cause is an initiating event or failing from which all other causes spring. These are generally management or planning failures. The root cause is the key component of an incident investigation. You must address the root causes of an incident to ensure no future incidents occur.

Get to the root cause with Incident Insight

Incident investigations are necessary, but often time-consuming and difficult to uncover the root cause. But what if you could complete an incident investigation in just an afternoon? This simple question kicked off a full brainstorm at Salus which resulted in the creation of our Incident Insight software.

Incident Insight

Incident Insight was created to simplify incident investigations. Our software allows you to map out an incident and understand the root cause, revising your organisations safety process and preventing future serious incidents occurring. Through identifying the root cause, common themes are likely to occur, addressing these potential hazards can prevent future incidents.

Like our Bowtie Master software, it features intuitive drag-and-drop technology, making it easy to visualise the bigger picture while keeping track of the finer details. Designed with the entire team in mind, it enables everyone in your organisation to play a role in identifying the root cause and preventing the next incident from occurring.

Key features of Incident Insight

Hold on Sherlock, we’ve got some features that make investigations a lot more fun to do.

1. Timeline of Events: Add the date, month, time, or a combination to an element of your investigation.
2. Mark effective and failed barriers: Distinguish effective, partially effective, and failed barriers in your investigation with the ‘✅’ or ‘❎’ symbols on your element. This helps understand what caused barriers to fail.
3. Supporting documents: Attach supporting documents such as photos, pdf, Word, and Excel files.
4. Share a Diagram: Share your masterpiece via high-quality image, a live link that can be accessed via any web browser, or by inviting users to view or edit your diagram.
5. Download a Report: Create full Word reports instantly with our export feature or export as an Excel file.

Did you know you can also turn your bowtie diagram into an incident investigation instantly? Simply press the II logo on your toolbar. Select the threat which triggered the top event, along with the associated consequences. Kickstart your incident investigations.

Do you want to help prevent future incidents? Book a demo at your most convenient time.