Posted By Gordon Thelwell
As i understand the term from my NEBOSH adventure...., a near miss is an incident that had the potential to become an accident. I prefer to call them near hits and i understand that RIDDOR is to be revised in order to take these incidents into account and impose a specific duty to investigate them. I have emailed you a seminar document about near miss management systems.

Regards,

Gordon.

Posted By Bob Pedley
Peter,
We use the following as a guide but require all our incidents to be assessed for their individual severity potential. From this we instigate the appropriate level of investigation.

Near Miss
Basic principle of a near miss is that an injury, or loss below a defined level, did not actually occur, but the events, actions by people, equipment failures, or exposure to energy sources/chemicals that were observed could have caused loss under slightly different circumstances. The prime aim in reporting and investigating ‘near misses’ is to avoid injuries and other losses without the cost. In other words, a free lesson.

EXAMPLES

People Damage

Firstly, if no actual injury occurred but someone could have ‘been struck by an improperly slung load’, ‘fallen due to inadequate barriers’, ‘struck by a passing vehicle’, ‘caught in unguarded machinery’, ‘suffered chemical exposure through improper use of PPE’, ‘been exposed to an electrical current through inadequate isolation’, etc. The aim is to look for potentially significant injuries not minor events which should show up in normal hazard spotting systems and daily logs.

Secondly, where an actual injury did occur (was in itself regarded as small) but had the potential to have caused major injury or death – a cut was sustained to a finger when caught in an unguarded guillotine press, the potential being to have cut off a hand – a minor inhalation was suffered whilst working unprotected in a vessel, the potential being to be fatally exposed, etc.

Property Damage

When something was damaged, only to a low level (that is, below a few hundred pounds) but a much more significant event could have happened costing thousands or more. Alternatively no damage happened but again a large loss could occur under different circumstances. This would include vehicles scraping against pipework causing minor repairs but could have pulled down a whole gantry, a crane lifting and dropping a block of lead onto the floor when it could have fallen on to a furnace, an operating malpractice which over-pressured a vessel but could have caused it to rupture, etc.

Major Hazard Potential

Where a loss was sustained with small effects but could have been a major incident. If a small release of flammable chemical which was normally an environmental breach could have caught fire and caused a much larger incident (as in storage areas) in the particular circumstances at the time. Or a drum of compound fell off a lorry without puncturing in the middle of a motorway. Wrong material going into a tank where chemicals are not compatible.

A NEAR MISS (continued)


Process Loss

When an equipment failure, inadequate operational standard, deviation from procedure or unsatisfactory laid-down instruction causes a minor loss below several hundred pounds but could easily have caused the loss of tens of thousands of pounds of product, or caused an environmental loss, or when the pressure in a still rose abnormally but stopped just short of bursting disc failure, had it gone further an emission to atmosphere would have resulted.

Environmental Loss

Where no breach of consent actually occurs but slightly different circumstances could have caused a major emission – a raised pH in the boundary ditch through a slight overflow of caustic which under other circumstances could have been several tonnes.

Fire Potential

Where no actual smoke or fire occurs but the necessary conditions were nearly realised. An over-heating smell in electrical equipment, hot ducting from pyrophoric dusts, sparking in a hazard zone area, an over-heating pump bearing on lead alkyl duty where explosive decomposition could occur.

Excessive Energy Sources

Lightning strikes with no actual loss, major electrical overload, heat wave causing undue personnel burden, severe cold weather conditions without loss occurring, unusually large wave striking a ship, high wind causing a vehicle to swerve.

Posted By Alan Harwood
Peter,

You may wish to have a look at the following site - http://opim.wharton.upen.../risk/proj/nearmiss.html

There is some interesting reading. It has inspired me to review our near-miss reporting system. Our current methodology considers near-misses to be events, i.e. 'something fell over and nearly hit someone'. We are now opening this out to include unsafe conditions and behaviours. Both have the potential to become an incident and merit reporting, analysis and preventative action.

Our new near-miss definition (plagiarised from the web site) is :- "An opportunity to improve HS&E practice based on a condition, or an incident with the potential for more serious consequence"

Alan

Posted By Jack
I seem to recall Frank Bird Jr use the term near-loss incident but I think it's very easy to get bogged down in semantics in this kind of discussion. In every discussion of near miss's someone always says they prefer the term near hit and I know what they mean but it does not exactly roll off the tongue although it can useful to get discussion going in training sessions. I'm actually happy with the term near-miss-accident. In other words it is an accident which did not lead to injury or damage but very nearly did. I take the point that some might assume a near miss is not an accident at all.

In your two scenarios I would treat the first as a near miss and the second as a hazard but I can see why others would consider the latter a near miss.

Frank Bird Jr's definitions of accident terms can be helpful in this area too. He made reference to accident's usually involving contact with an energy source e.g. kinetic, electrical, chemical, thermal etc. A near miss accident is where there is the expenditure of energy such as the falling brick but no injury or property damage. The open access panel is not a near-miss-accident because there is no expenditure of energy and is a hazard because there was the potential for an accident.

Posted By Raymond Rapp
Peter et al,

The term 'near miss' has created a number of difficulties and whether an incident is a near miss, an accident without inury or loss, a minor injury with the potential for more serious consequences, is largely a matter of semantics.

Near miss is synoymous with my industry (railway) because there are often incidents that mostly by 'luck' do not give rise to a serious accident. Indeed, at our annual safety conference the Director of Safety referred to the Chancery Lane train accident as a "near miss", alluding to the fact that there was only one significant injury with the potential for worse.

Personally, I think the term near miss should be substituted for some other term within safety as it gives the impression that nothing or little has happened. Therefore, the incident often does not get the attention it may deserve.

Posted By John Channing
I agree with the other folk who dislike the term 'near miss'. I don't really like 'near hit' but it does convey a better message. I just refer to all of them as 'Incidents' for two reasons. Firstly it is a matter of probability whether a falling brick drops into the mud and is undamaged or whether is falls to fatally injur a person - consequences are not easily predicted. Secondly, I prefer incidents to 'accidents' because common perception seems to accept 'accidents happen' whereas in nearly all cases people will accept 'incidents' can be prevented. So for me 'incidents' is a better term that implies:
- they are preventable
- they span the range of 'loss outcomes'
- if we learn from the minor outcomes we may prevent the major losses
- 'incidents' allows us to be flexible on intervention points i.e. managers can exercise judgement on when and how they intervene (there's good and bad to that!)
Hope this adds to the discussion!
JOHN CHANNING

Posted By Murray S Graham
Peter,
I have just read all the answers you have received to your question and I can't help feeling that people are making things a little more difficult than they need to be. Using the good old dictionary as a guide I would list the scenarios you set under the following headings.

Scenario 1 (falling brick) - near miss.
Scenario 2 (manhole cover) - incident.

Should an unpleasent event that causes damage, injury, or death occure then this ofcourse is an accident.

Come on guys, people outside the Health and Safety world already think we are all "Trainspotters", don't give them any ammunition.

Posted By Geoff Burt
Well Murray, you've put forward your ideas of definitions and so have others.

Where do we go from here without being called 'trainspotters'?

Do we just accept yours?

Posted By Murray S Graham
Peter,
Many thanks for pointing out the importance some organisations place on the definition of different situations. Coming from the forces where most things are clear cut, it feels like a whole new ball game. Well, back to the drawing board.

Geoff,
These were not my definitions, they were taken out of the Collins Dictionary. I was only trying to make the point that if they were good enough for the English language then it may be just good enough for us.

I wouldn't be so crass to presume that the H&S fraternity were all just waiting for me to come along and give them the answer. So I dont think they shoud just accept my definitions.

As for "Trainspotters", well, If I had all the answers I'd be getting more money than I am.

Take it easy Guy's

Posted By Jason Touraine
Murray. Good enough for the English language, good enough for us. Poppycock! Try your dictionary for Hazard and it'll probably say it means Risk. Where will that leave us?

Posted By Robert K Lewis
I actually think we need to jump out of the box. A good definition of hazard might be any circumstance creating or increasing risk in an area. A near miss then is the arising of any such circumstance that elevates the risk beyond the assessed levels.

This is very broad but after all we know with reasonable confidence that the majority, in excess of 94% in my view, are avoidable and thus subject to control. If we are to achieve world class performance we need to get as much information as we can in a proactive reporting atmosphere, coupled with a strong no blame learning culture. To trifle with detailed definitions between created hazard and near miss clouds the issue. We need a handle on all the unplanned and unassessed occurrences.

Bob