Hi everyone,

In our lifting operations, we’ve got a solid process for investigating incidents — when something serious happens, we identify the root causes and put actions in place.

Where we struggle is with near-miss reporting. These events often go unreported, and I suspect our current system feels too formal or time-consuming for people working on-site or in the yard.

I want to make it simple and worthwhile for our teams to share near misses — even quick reports that help us learn before something more serious occurs.

Has anyone introduced an easy-to-use reporting system or approach that’s worked well in the lifting or crane industry?

I’d love to hear what’s helped improve engagement and learning in your organisation.

Hi Azeebp,

Whilst not specifically the lifting industry, I have experience implementing and using near miss reporting and other proactive reporting systems across sites including mining, construction and chemical processing. You've highlighted the main reason for disenfrachisment with these systems - too formal and too time consuming.

What I've found works really well, although will be dependent on your company / site attitude towards tablets / phones, is a digital system. The tablet / phone situation is easier to navigate if these are company issued and protected as such / policy in place. This digital system uses software either paid (e.g. My Compliance Management) or free via Microsoft Forms (free with Office 365). 

Microsoft Forms can be used to produce an online form template that can be built as you see fit with options for free text responses, multiple choice / tick box etc and photos can be added for evidence. The beauty of MS Forms is that you can have a link to it via a printable QR code. This means that you can print off the QR code and plaster it all over your sites and offices, meaning that all anyone needs to do to submit a report is scan the QR code and it takes them to the form.

If you are IT savvy the back end of the system can be setup yourself or get help from IT but by utilising Power Automate (another free application with Office 365) you can setup a "flow" that sends an email when the form is filled out to automatically forward this to the relevant person e.g. H&S Manager / Advisor. That person would then instantly recieve an email notificaiton and would be able to conduct the investigation / delagate corrective actions quickly. This is a link to a tutorial to set something like this up - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8sg2yGg6Q1g&t=133s

The MS form system also updates a spreadhseet with all hisotric responses so that you can do any trend analysis from this. 

Happy to provide additional help if I can but the main takeaway is that there are easy to use / setup systems available free of charge. I would strongly encourage anyone else to explore MS forms and Power Automate as it has a huge potential for application in this space. We currently use it for our proactive monitoring system and are able to conduct trend analaysis to base training / awareness programmes on. It can also link with PowerBi to aid with any internal / external reporting requirements.

Hope this helps