Could anyone point me in the direction of good material on using the Taproot system please? Any advice/ direction would be highly appreciated. Thanks in advance. Regards LS

Wrong link - try this one; http://www.taproot.com/ Proprietary materials handed out when you attend the approved course. Don't bother with the software though ;) Regards, Ross

Thanks very much for this DeanoJ and RiskyBusiness for the respective links. I will check these out once I get in. Very helpful. Jontyjohnston, I think with these softwares it is GI-GO so the User must have a wider understanding of the principles of causation and analysis. Thanks again everyone. LS

I totally disagree , i have used both Taproot and Kelvin Topset methodologies , it all depends of investigation team skills and expertise SHV

Morning SHV, I see your balanced perspective here. Might i infer that, where the user and team has good overall understanding and developed accident investigating skills then they should be able to mix methodologies achieve the goal. In situations where the user identifies a particular software/ technique is not the best for investigating a particular incident then a flexible approach should be taken. Infering from what Hilary suggested, maybe it would be best for the user to use an additional technique/ method to boost their efforts in arriving at the appropriate root cause. LS

Hilary summed it up nicely....... Too may investigations turn into post accident inspections and audits, identifying lots of factors that were not "causative" of the accident outcome. Using tools that send you looking for all those factors.....well.......what I said in the original post but with less words. J

LSMIKLE2, Thank you for your question about TapRooT. I believe in honesty and transparency of who I am first before I post. As a TapRooT Root Cause Instructor with the company that created TapRooT, I wanted to clarify some of the statements written above. Misconception 1, " Not used often in the UK". Over 6,000 people trained in our courses in Europe alone. This number does not include courses taught by company certified instructors. This number does not include companies working in Europe that were trained in other continents. This does not include numbers of those who have participated as untrained team members in investigations done in Europe. Misconception 2,"Just good for novices. Experts are fine with 5 why's". Remember, it is not how many questions that one asks, it is what is asked. Some "experts", want to drive the root cause process (no matter which one they use). Driving creates bias and often throws away needed evidence. Shorter investigation does not equal a good one. Our process is used as a discovery process and has 7 expert systems built into it (Quality Control, Procedures, Human Engineering, Training, Work Direction, Communication). I have yet to see all those experts sitting in a room asking the 5 why's. Thus the number of repeat incidents you see from processes that are driven by the facilitator only or brainstorming. Misconception 3, "will take you down too many paths or rabbit holes." This is a misconception expressed by many of those untrained, those that want the answer to support their own derived root cause only or sad to say, a misconception sold by competitors. In some limited cases it is a perception based on not following the trained process. Our root causes are absences of best practices that lead to a causal factor. If one gets scope creep and identifies all the missing best practices that the company has but forgets to stay focused on the one causal factor that they are analyzing, then it is possible to list too many root causes. This is not design issue but an identifier that the person broke a few rules of the process. One correct concept is that not everything needs a TapRooT done on it. If you decide that a full investigation is not warranted and that root causes are not needed and that the risk of repeat is minor, then no TapRooT suggested or needed. High Potentials however should be investigated with TapRooT. There is NOT ONE major incident that I have investigated where this was the first time that the Causal Factors had occurred. Which means that this issue should not of occurred if the HP had been investigated using TapRooT or another structured process that guides the team. Feel free to contact me offline at vallee@taproot.com

I totally agree with you RiskyBusiness.

J, Great question, "How does that logic stand up when an accident is the direct result of a deliberate act of commission or omission by an individual?" In the TapRooT Process, if there are no missing or inadequate to standards, policies and administrative management system best practices and this is truly a one off deliberate action or inaction of the employee, then we recommend in our corrective action helper to proceed with the company's progressive discipline process. I always suggest that the investigation facilitator, state that this causal factor is an action or commission of policy with no management system root causes found, turned over over to HR or labor relations. Interesting enough, rarely to find the action of one to be a one-off behavior though.