Accident investigation

[rvh823]

Hi guys,

I'm new here and fairly new in my role as Safety Director at a construction company in Colorado. I've taken my 30-hr. OSHA class and am getting pretty up to speed as far as rules and regs. With that being said, I'd like some advice on an incident that happened today.

One of my concrete crews is in the process of doing curb & gutter and sidewalk replacement for the local municipality. There was an accident involving a homeowner tripping and falling on some tie wire strung accross the sidewalk within our barricades. The wire itself wasn't marked, eventhough we had "sidewalk closed" signs at either end of the street. He parked his car accross the street mid block and crossed straight to his house. I took care of the issue with my Supervisor as far as marking ANY wire with either cones or pieces of caution tape.

My question is, I know how to conduct an accident investigation for my employees being hurt, do I need to do anything different with the fact that it was a homeowner that was injured?

Thanks,
rvh823

[Hazardman]

Welcome to the Safety Cafe rvh823!

I'm sure someone here with the appropriate expertise will answer your question shortly!
Why don't you introduce yourself in the 'Introductions' section.

Hazardman

[rparnow]

The purpose of an accident investigation is to find the root cause(s) of the accident/incident. Whether it is your employee or a visitor to your worksite, you'll want to find out what can be done differently so that no such incident happens in the future. It's not a time to lay blame, but to recommend/implement improved procedures that help us work more safely.

[Mining Man]

I think you would investigate this just the same as any other incident. Sure, some of your outcomes may relate to the person's behavior, and where you'd normally give them some coaching on hazard awareness you won't be able to do that. And you may have to accept that the risk of this happening is as low as you can practically get it, even though it's still possible.

However, you should find a lot of other useful outcomes from the investigation that you can take action on, and you may even find one that could have prevented the incident.

On a similar note - I read somewhere that the cruise ship which was hit by the abnormally large waves a few weeks ago and a few people were killled - the company which owned the ship was not going to do an investigation because they said it was complete accident and natural causes. Not good. Surely, like in your case, they need to investigate to find out if there's anything they practically could have done to reduce to consequences of the event.

Not to mention (although it shouldn't be the reason you do the investigation) - if it happens again to another person and you end up in court, you'd hate to be in the positive where the same thing had happened before and you didn't do anything about it. Like it or not, documenting the investigation is important, even if you've already taken the actions which will probably come out of it.

Cheers,
Jamie Ross - Mining Man
http://www.miningman.com