Posted By Pete48
Hi Golam, I dont think they are. Unsafe conditionS and acts are important to check and remove but not for near miss reports.
If a person actually tripped on, lets say a spanner left on a walkway, but they didnt fall or hurt themselves, that equals a near miss.
No doubt you will get lots of other opinions but this example has helped me to decide on cases for over 25 years.
Good luck

Posted By Jay Joshi
It depends upon how you define it!

First and foremost, it is ridiculous to request this, unless it is a part of a properly implemented Behaviour based Observation system or you have such an unsafe site etc that this number of near misses are actually occurring and can be reported.

It is possible that your employer is confused with terminology used!

For example in my organisation we have 4 categories of formal reporting of what we call "HSE Events":-

Potential Hazard:
A hazard that requires action to be made safe is identified.e.g. A water spill on a smooth hard floor!

Near Miss:-
An “event” has occurred but nobody has been injured and no equipment has been damaged.

As in the previous example, a spanner falls from a higher level, but does not injure anyone


Incident
An event has occurred and there has been damage to equipment or a spill has gone beyond the point at which material can be recovered.
e.g a chemical spill in a lab or a chemical plant, but no effect on people


Accident
An event has occurred and somebody has been hurt-this is self explianatory.


Our highest category is in potential hazards--most are trivial and are only this category, when it is to do with the "facility" is dealt with by our Facilities Management Contractor via a help-desk facility and do not require a form to be filled.

We have a standard form for all 4 categories and at a site with 400 employees and 100 contractors reported in 2008 :-

Nil RIDDORs

1 OSHA recordable medical treatment case

10 First Aid accidents

11 near misses

28 incidents

9 potential hazards throur our formal "form fillin" system

295 potential hazards via ourr facilities system

2376 Behaviour based safety observations

Posted By Raymond Rapp
Golam

I have never seen an unequivocal definition of a near miss. I suggest it is an unplanned event that a) did not result in a loss (injury or damage; b) an unplanned event that resulted in a minor loss, but under slightly different circumstances could have been far more serious.

However, the whole point of reporting a near miss is to learn from the incident and to put corrective measures in place to prevent re-occurence. I suggest, by using the 'spanner on the walkway' scenario, that this type of incident is not a near miss as there is little to be learnt or prevent re-ocurrence. It could and probably will occur again. Save your near misses for those incidents that normally can be prevented.

Ray

Posted By Finlay McGuire
Surely the real issue here is the idea of having targets for near Misses or any other such H&S event. For management to demand "at least X " reports is as bonkers as it would be cynical for them to only allow "up to X".

Or are all these Misses going to someones head.

Posted By Merv Newman
For me a "near miss" is an incident that COULD have resulted in injury or loss. But didn't. A spanner on the floor is perhaps the result of an unsafe act. An incident or an event. Not a near miss.

If someone steps on it, slips and recovers without injury then that is a near miss. And anyway, that mythical "safe site" won't have any near misses, incidents or events. Will it ?

Jay, how many of your behavioural observations were "positive" ie someone seen to be doing it right ?

Best way to get incidents and near misses reported is to welcome them. (being reported)

Best way to deal successfully with injuries/events is to ask yourself "How can we make sure that can nevernevernrever happens again ? (or at least not until I've retired)

Merv

Posted By Barry Bruce
Surely an unsafe act or unsafe condition is, by definition, a Near Miss. If its unsafe and didnt lead to loss or injury, but could have should circumstances have been different, then this constitutes a Near Miss in my opinion.

The important thing is that these are reported - you can record as a Near Miss or a Potential Hazard - whichever you find more suitable. If your organisation has poor NMR reporting it might be useful to encourage the reporting of these, which in turn may encourage the reporting in the first place (if that makes any sense).

Posted By John J
I have similar situation where most near misses are hazard spotting exercises.
That said they all have value and if you try and be too prescriptive you will end up losing more than you gain.
The near misses that tend to get me most concerned are repeat near misses indicating we didn't learn from them the first time. These are now recorded on our daily event board as a trigger for a Event Investigation,

Regards,

John

Posted By Jay Joshi
Ken,

Despite the numbers, we are pragmatic and are not overly focused on bring down the numbers for all types of events, except the OSHA recordables (and the RIDDORs)

We have an additional aspect in that we assign a severity rating to each one of the events on a scale of 1 to 5, where 1 is the lowest and 5 is the highest--therefore resources expended are proportional to the severity.

We prefer that everyone reports the events, even the most minor first-aid ones.

We have the privilege of a large first aid team with radios, therefore we do not keep first-aid kits freely available for anyone to help themselves.

However, it is the culmination of more than 10 years of effort by all -management, employees and on site contractors (primarily our Facilities Management Contractor) that we have reached this stage

We are fortunate that we are a technology/innovation based organisation that has a high proportion of employees who can be easily encouraged, but they require hard data to buy into the various initiatives we have.

Posted By safetyamateur
I'm still trying to get my head round this 'potential hazard' thing. What's the opposite of an oxymoron?

For me, an unsafe act is a hazard.

We report hazards and incidents using the same system.

Good luck in raising all those reports. Suspect you won't get much help from the staff themselves so you're in for a lot of work