Posted By Raymond Rapp Michael The under reporting of near misses is allegedly common place in organisations. My company working in utilities, construction and rail, use a unique method for recording near misses. All h&s inspection reports are recorded via an Excel type template and copied to our head office, where the information is stored on a data base. The scoring system for activities is 1-10, with 8 being company standard, 4-7 corrective action is needed, 3 or less is a non-conformance and requires immediate action. All activities between 4 and 7 are 'classed' as a near miss. The data is then analysed with actual accidents and incidents for trends etc. Should you require more information please feel free to contact me direct. Regards Ray

Posted By Michael Armstrong Thanks Christopher and Ray for you information, your help is much appreciated. If any others can provide me with info on how their company deals with near misses I would be very grateful. Regards Michael

Posted By Pete48 Micheal, I have never had any great success with establishing the theory of "near miss" reporting into practice in an H&S programme. Yes, I have introduced it and gained some results but it always needed; a lot of explaining; avoidance of too much rationalisation by users and analysts; strong leadership and once left as a routine process would diminish pretty quickly. Whether this has been due to a lack of skill on my part or inherent failures in the process is, of course, debatable. Whichever it may be I have experienced a much better level of success from a synergy with Quality management. There the concept of quality improvement requests /corrective action requests/ defect reports seems to be accepted more readily by both managers and employees. By morphing the near miss into a quality report you can gain the useful data that can be presented as part of the Quality reports. The type of analysis and use of the output is integrated into the Q reports and used in the same way to drive continuous improvement at all levels in the organisation. The definition then becomes "anything that could improve the safety of our workplace, our people, our products and our safety performance, difficulties in compliance to standards etc. So as a low level example, what would get reported would be the "dodgy" step rather than a near miss report saying I tripped on the step and if.... Some might argue that this is not near miss reporting but it is pro-active, does not rule out near miss reports and it does improve H&S without waiting for the accident to happen before doing anything. It worked particularly well on one occasion when working in the glass industry when we named them Safety Corrective Action Reports! (SCAR)The results were beyond expectation and unlocked a whole raft of information and subsequent problem solving. I am convinced it was being within the quality programme that made that possible and ensured that it continued to flourish.

Posted By Alan Hoskins Our report form is entitled "Report of Injury, Ill Health or Dangerous Occurrence (Including Near Miss)" but I can easily count on the fingers of one hand the number of near miss reports we receive annually. Having said that, there are numerous items and issues reported using other means (the Estates Help Desk service for example) which are made as a result of what probably would have been a near miss incident (someone slipping or tripping on or over something for example, but not being injured, will often result in a report about the trip hazard to get it repaired or removed). With e-mail and the telephone being used for this type of incident reporting, I think the form is now pretty well redundant for near miss reporting. Perhaps we need to link into the alternative systems now. The near miss reports we do receive are generally for significant incidents and I would expect the incidence of these to be low. Alan

Posted By Merv Newman We use a definition which says "A "near miss" is an incident which, while not causing material damage or bodily injury, could have done so if circumstances had been slightly different" This made the difference between an "incident" : material damage only, and an "accident" : bodily harm. Supervisors are on orders, if you like, to welcome near miss and incident reporting with open arms, a smile and a cup of coffee. "Thanks for telling me you've just destroyed the chairman's jag with your FLT. Let's have a coffee and chat about it. we need to see how we can avoid doing that to his next one, like we did with his others" Encouraging positive reaction to reporting is essential. Otherwise all sorts of things that you need to know will stay underground. Also, during any enquiry, try to find something positive to say about the person or persons involved. "rapid reporting" is an example of a "positive" and should be included in the report. Go on. force yourself. Reports normally only mention the errors, which leads to the feeling that you are looking to prove someone guilty. Which leads to a lot of self-protecting replies. Merv