An accident or incident is any unplanned event that results in personal injury, property damage, environmental accidents (spills), fires or loss of profit. When the personal injury requires little or no treatment, it is minor. If it results in a fatality or in a permanent total, permanent partial, or temporary total (lost-time) disability, it is serious. Similarly, property damage, environmental accidents and fires may be minor or serious.

Thousands of accidents occur throughout the world every day. The failure of people, equipment, supplies, or surroundings to behave or react as expected causes most of the incidents. Accident investigations determine how and why these failures occur. By sharing this information gained through an investigation within your organization, contractors and beyond, a similar or perhaps more disastrous accident may be prevented. 

We conduct accident investigations with accident prevention in mind. Investigations are NOT to place blame.

Accidents are usually complex. An accident may have 10 or more events that can be causes. A detailed analysis of an accident will normally reveal three cause levels: basic, direct, and indirect. At the lowest level, an accident results only when a person or object receives an amount of energy or hazardous material that cannot be absorbed safely. This energy or hazardous material is the DIRECT CAUSE of the accident. The direct cause is usually the result of one or more unsafe acts or unsafe conditions, or both. Unsafe acts and conditions are the INDIRECT CAUSES or symptoms. In turn, indirect causes are usually traceable to poor management policies and decisions, or to personal or environmental factors. These are the BASIC CAUSES.

Overseas Contract Consultants has the manpower and expertise in accident investigation techniques that has proven beneficial in understanding the direct and indirect causes of an incident. Our team has investigated hundreds of Level 1 (low level) to Level 3 (high level) incidents’ to identify the direct and indirect causes of the incident. Once the causes are identified we will then create a Corrective Action Item List (CAIL) that is plan on how to correct and prevent this type of incident from reoccurrence. The Corrective Action Item Lists are developed on the SMART principal.

1. Specific – Does the corrective action pinpoint what needs to be done? Ask yourself “If I was assigned this corrective action would I know what to do?”
2. Measurable - Can the corrective action be measured quantitatively?
3. Accountable - Is the corrective action assigned to a person with target date for completion?
4. Relevant- Will the corrective action prevent or significantly reduce the odds of this problem happening again? Is it cost effective, feasible, and practical and can it be implemented? Will this corrective action cause any problems? Has someone independent from the team reviewed the corrective action for unintended negative impacts on the process or the people?
5. Time limits - Is the due date for corrective action reasonable?

Finally an Executive Summary will be created for the specific incident that highlights the initial incident, investigation, facts, timeline, photos, root causes and corrective action items. This can be passed along to your department heads as a learning tool from where we learn from the incident and get back to doing what you do best.

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