NEBOSH Incident Investigation flashcards
NEBOSH Incident Investigation · Build recall with a focused review session.
32 cards. Read the term and the definition here. The deck at the top of this page is optional.
- Incident
- An unplanned event that caused or could have caused injury, ill health, damage, or loss. It includes near-misses as well as events that produced actual harm.
- Accident
- A subset of incidents in which the unplanned event actually resulted in injury, ill health, damage, or other loss, as distinct from a near-miss.
- Near-miss
- An unplanned event that did not cause harm or damage but had the potential to do so; investigating near-misses reveals failures before real harm occurs.
- RIDDOR
- The UK Reporting of Injuries, Diseases and Dangerous Occurrences Regulations 2013, requiring employers to report specified incidents to the enforcing authority.
- Over-7-day injury
- An injury that keeps a worker off normal duties for more than seven consecutive days, excluding the day of the incident; reportable to the enforcing authority.
- Dangerous occurrence
- A specified near-miss event with high harm potential, such as scaffold collapse or lifting equipment failure, that must be reported even when no injury results.
- Immediate cause
- The unsafe act or unsafe condition present at the point of loss, such as a missing guard or an operator bypassing an interlock.
- Root cause
- The underlying management-system failure, such as inadequate training, poor supervision, or missing maintenance, that allowed the immediate cause to exist.
- Human error versus violation
- Errors are unintended slips, lapses, or mistakes; violations are deliberate deviations from a rule or procedure. Both are shaped by system design.
- Investigation terms of reference
- A written statement defining the investigation's scope, objectives, team, resources, and reporting arrangements, agreed before evidence gathering begins.
- Evidence types
- People (statements, interviews), positions (scene layout, photographs), parts (failed components), and paper (procedures, permits, training and maintenance records).
- Chain of custody
- A documented record of who collected, handled, and stored each physical item of evidence, used to preserve its integrity for legal or disciplinary proceedings.
- Witness interview technique
- Use open questions first, then probe for detail; interview witnesses separately and promptly; avoid leading questions and record fact separately from opinion.
- Scene preservation
- Isolating and protecting the incident scene, photographing and sketching before disturbance, and recording perishable evidence such as positions and environmental conditions.
- Triangulation of evidence
- Corroborating a finding across at least two independent sources, such as a witness statement, a document, and physical evidence, to increase reliability.
- Documentary evidence
- Paper or electronic records such as risk assessments, method statements, permits to work, training records, and maintenance logs used to establish what should have happened.
- Scene reconstruction
- Rebuilding the sequence of events using measurements, photographs, and scale drawings, noting lighting, weather, floor condition, and obstructions at the time.
- GDPR in investigations
- Personal data in statements and reports must be processed lawfully, kept secure, and shared only with those having a legitimate need, such as insurers or regulators.
- Five Whys
- An iterative questioning technique that repeatedly asks 'why' until the management-system cause is reached, typically in three to five steps.
- Fishbone diagram
- A cause-and-effect diagram with branches for Manpower, Method, Machine, Material, Measurement, and Environment, used to structure brainstorming of contributory factors.
- Fault tree analysis
- A deductive, top-down technique starting from the top event and identifying combinations of failures, linked by AND/OR gates, that could produce it.
- Event tree analysis
- An inductive, forward technique starting from an initiating event and following success or failure branches to model possible outcomes and barrier performance.
- Bow-tie analysis
- A diagram mapping threats to a top event on the left and consequences on the right, with preventive and mitigating barriers, highlighting weak or missing controls.
- Swiss-cheese model
- A model in which incidents occur when holes in multiple defensive layers, such as organisational, supervisory, and technical barriers, align to allow a hazard through.
- Change analysis
- Comparing the incident condition with a known safe baseline to identify what changed in people, equipment, procedure, or environment before the event.
- Barrier analysis
- Identifying which preventive or mitigating barriers failed, were missing, or were ineffective, then tracing each failure to a pre-condition and underlying management factor.
- Task analysis
- Breaking an activity into steps to identify where error or deviation was possible, supporting the design of controls and procedures.
- Investigation report structure
- Summary, scope, methodology, sequence of events, findings, conclusions, recommendations with owners and timescales, and appendices containing evidence.
- SMART recommendations
- Corrective actions that are Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-bound, each with a named accountable person and completion date.
- Hierarchy of control
- Prioritising corrective actions as eliminate, substitute, engineering controls, administrative controls, then PPE, preferring higher-order controls.
- Action tracking register
- A log of recommendations with status, owner, due date, and evidence of completion, reviewed at management meetings until closed and verified.
- RIDDOR reporting deadlines
- Notify the enforcing authority without delay for deaths and specified injuries, and submit the written report within 10 days; over-7-day injuries within 15 days.