Dear All,

I have a small confusion in deciding the category of below incident,

On yesterday, in the evening (nearing to the plant's shift end)- one of our technician while walking he sprained his foot. He received a first aid treatment from our clinic for sprain injury. In the same evening (after 3 hours of this), his foot started to paining and he visited one of the clinic nearest and they took the x-ray and found a hairline fracture on his right foot tip.

Should I consider this incident as an LTI?. My justification for not considering this an an LTI is that this injury not just caused due to the absence or lack of procedures/rules/inadequate workplace control measures/equipments or tools failure. The area he was walking was a fully concreted pathway with no obstruction or tripping hazards.

Would you kindly advise me on this whether it should be consider as an LTI or not. (My plant just achieved safety milestone of 1 million man-hours without any LTI).

Not yet, my plant is just strted its commercial operation and we are in the process of getting OHSAS 18001 certification.

vinod, it's always difficult to deal with an 'non-work-related' accident that occurs while at work.

What footwear was he wearing? Regular shoes, trainers or work boots?

Was the footwear new, i.e. wearing them only recently?

Hi Vinod - If he can return to work the follow day (so today) then it is not an LTI however dependent on the location of the break this might be RIDDOR reportable. A fracture to any area other than fingers, thumbs and toes would be a RIDDOR reportable ‘Major Injury’ and would therefore require you to raise an F2508 form for this specific injury.

Hope this helps, had a debate a few months back regarding the definition of an LTI and all the responses were the same ‘ injury causing the individual not to be able to return to work the following day after the incident/accident’.

Regardless of the presence of endless SOP’s Risk Assessments, SSoW and the area being clear this would have no bearing on the need to report an LTI – it is purely based on lost time.

Make sure to carry out full investigation and learn some lessons from this especially if you need to report as a RIDDOR. Document your investigation and gather supporting documentation surrounding this incident – it’s the right thing to do anyway but people may well ask to see it!

Regards

Casci - note from the Poster's details that they may be in the Middle East and, if so, RIDDOR would not apply.

Silly question but has he actually lost any time, you don't say ?
Are you saying he tripped over his own feet ?
Could they have slipped on something on the floor ?
As you don't come under RIDDOR etc, what are your own internal rules for LTI and does this incident meet your own requirements to be LTI ?
Are you absolutely sure he didn't come to work with the injury (as it was towards they end of the day I guess unlikely, but worth checking)

Is your 1 million hours relevant for customer ? or internal only, if internal will not classing the incident as LTI send the message to the workforce it is meaningless and lose whatever credibility you think it has ? I'm with others, I think it is a useless measure and I tend not to believe it whenever I see it quoted.

In case there is no local country kegislation criteria such as RIDDOr for UK or OSHA for USA, you need to have your own. Most global companies use the OSHA criteria for Corporate Reporting. Also, the most common definition of a lost time accident is at least one day lost ( i.e. the person does not turn up for work because of the injury), but not inlcluding the day of the accident!

Even if you use OSHA criteria, you may have to have your own supplementary criteria, eg for visitors & contractors if you als include them in your data.

The OSHA criteria for workrelatedness is much more prescriptive than the UK RIDDOR one, at:-
http://www.osha.gov/pls/...=STANDARDS&p_id=9636


Not only that, but for each aspect, there are standard interpretations in the form of official responses by OSHA e.g.:-


http://www.osha.gov/pls/...RETATIONS&p_id=24329