Briefing Note No.15

Energy Institute Briefing Note No. 15 - Incident and Accident Analysis

Incident and accident analysis (hereafter referred to as incident analysis) is, in many cases, carried out at a superficial level in a wide range of industries. Some analyses conclude that the cause of an incident was ‘human error’. They may go further and identify that the human error was a result of lack of training, with a typical remedial action being to retrain the person involved in the incident. In terms of modern safety management, there should be a more thorough analysis. Such an analysis ignores the fundamental question ‘why’ was training, in this case, lacking?