Incident Investigation and Emergency Preparedness
This domain tests whether you can run a defensible investigation, find causes that can actually be fixed, meet OSHA reporting clocks, and build emergency plans that survive a real drill.
Reporting clocks and recordability
- Fatality: report to OSHA within 8 hours. In-patient hospitalization, amputation, or loss of an eye: within 24 hours, per 1904.39.
- Recordability under 1904.7 means death, days away, restricted work or transfer, medical treatment beyond first aid, loss of consciousness, or a significant injury diagnosed by a physician. Recordability and reportability are separate decisions.
Investigation method
- Secure the scene and preserve perishable evidence first: equipment positions, control settings, guard condition, samples, and photographs.
- Interview witnesses separately and promptly using open questions, separating what was observed from what was inferred.
- Build a timeline, then separate direct cause, contributing causes, and root causes. Employee carelessness is a symptom: ask why the error was possible - missing guard, no procedure, production pressure, no lockout.
- Corrective actions need an owner, a due date, and verification of effectiveness. Check whether the same failure exists on other lines.
Emergency preparedness
- Emergency action plan under 1910.38: reporting and alarm, evacuation routes and procedures, accounting for employees after evacuation, employees who remain for critical operations, rescue and medical duties, and named contacts. Fire prevention plan under 1910.39.
- HAZWOPER emergency response under 1910.120(q) defines responder levels from first responder awareness through technician and incident commander, with an annual 8-hour refresher.
- Exercise types: tabletop, functional, and full-scale. Each ends with an after-action report and a tracked corrective action list.
Worked example
A press operator amputates a fingertip while clearing a jam. Report to OSHA within 24 hours, not 8, which applies to fatalities, and record the case on the 300 log. The investigation finds the fixed guard had been removed to speed clearing, the jam-clearing task had no job hazard analysis, and lockout was skipped because the interlock permitted slow-mode operation. Corrective actions follow the hierarchy: an interlocked guard that prevents access, a jam-clearing procedure with lockout, training on both, and an audit six weeks later to verify. Retraining alone would have left the exposure unchanged.
Traps that cost marks
- Using the 8-hour fatality clock for amputations and hospitalizations.
- Interviewing witnesses together so accounts converge.
- Accepting human error as the root cause.
- Writing corrective actions with no owner or verification step.
- Running drills that never generate findings or follow-up.
- Confusing the emergency action plan with the fire prevention plan.