
Accident investigation is the process of determining the root causes of accidents, on-the-job injuries, property damage, and close calls in order to prevent them from occurring again.
Accident investigation will lead you to the real cause of why something happened, and armed with that knowledge, you can take affirmative steps to prevent future accidents from occurring.
The term “accident” can be defined as an unplanned event that interrupts the completion of an activity, and that may (or may not) include injury or property damage.
An incident usually refers to an unexpected event that did not cause injury or damage this time but had the potential. “Near miss” or “dangerous occurrence” are also terms for an event that could have caused harm but did not.
Please note: The term incident is used in some situations to cover both an “accident” and “incident”. It is argued that the word “accident” implies that the event was related to fate or chance. When the root cause is determined, it is usually found that many events were predictable and could have been prevented if the right actions were taken — making the event not one of fate or chance.
For simplicity, we use the term accident to mean all of the above events.
Incident investigations are often conducted by someone experienced in accident causation, but to be most effective, these investigations should include managers and employees working together, since each bring different knowledge, understanding and perspectives to the investigation.
It is also strongly advised that the investigators must be knowledgeable about the work processes involved.
However hoisting and lifting is a very complex area as it involves many legal, technical, specialized, competence, environmental and management aspects. This is complemented by technological limits and a rapid development of cranes and lifting equipment.
It is our experience, that without extremely knowledgeable and specialist input with regards to hoisting and lifting it will hardly be possible to find the correct root cause. We have numerous examples of incident investigations that resulted in surprising and never expected root causes.
Only when the correct root causes have been identified you can come with the right recommendations and prevent an accident from happening again.
The 12hoist4u specialists can assist you in finding the root cause of your hoisting, lifting and specialized transport accident.