Purpose of Conducting Investigations (SO1-AC4)

The prime objective of accident investigation is prevention. Finding the causes of an accident and taking steps to control or eliminate it can help prevent similar accidents from happening in the future.

Conducting investigations is a way of learning from incidents that occur over the life of a company and communicating the lessons learned to both internal personnel and other stakeholders. Depending upon the depth of the analysis, this feedback can apply to the specific incident under investigation or a group of incidents sharing similar root causes at one or more departments. Limited investigations may only provide feedback concerning the specific incident scenario by only focusing on the causal factors (sometimes referred to as direct causes) of an incident. Addressing the causal factors can reduce the frequency of the direct causes of the incident and/or reduce the consequences of future similar incidents. Thorough investigations can provide feedback on the performance by identifying and addressing the root causes of equipment failures and personnel errors, leveraged solutions can be developed that will reduce the frequency of entire categories of incidents and/or reduce the consequences of entire categories of incidents.

Click here to view a video about reasons to do an investigation.