Online Course: Advanced Safety Incident Investigation, Analysis & Report Writing

About the Course

“A ship in harbour is safe, but that is not what ships are built for.”

– William G.T. Shedd

For many years Dr Graham Edkins has worked with organisations in developing incident management systems, skilling staff in internationally regarded incident investigation methodologies, and conducting independent safety investigations into fatalities, major injuries, environmental harm, high potential and production loss events across a range of high risk industries and cultural backgrounds.

From this experience, Dr Edkins has a unique understanding of the specific competencies required of incident investigators and how best to develop and sustain these competencies in organisations that operate in fast paced, challenging environments. While the vast majority of organisations have adopted systemic incident analysis methods in line with international standards, there remains a distinct variability in the quality and robustness of the investigation analysis for several reasons:

• Not all organisations have a clearly defined risk-based approach to classifying safety occurrences and may not investigate to a comprehensive standard;
• Often, investigators have difficulty in distinguishing between contributing and non-contributing factors;
• The point at which control is lost is not always well defined, leading to a poor understanding of the efficacy of existing prevention and mitigation critical risk controls;
• The distinction between human failures and latent systemic conditions can be inconsistent because organisations do not provide a well-defined and structured list of contributing factor types, and
• Because contributing factor types are not always clearly defined, there are lost opportunities to identify repeat failure trends from which to direct more strategic accident prevention activities.

Who Will Benefit

This incident report writing training program is designed for those individuals with some experience in incident investigation or for those accountable managers responsible for reviewing the quality of incident investigation reports. This advanced incident investigation and root cause analysis training program will provide participants with a more structured, repeatable and transparent approach to conducting more effective investigations, consistent with international standards and to compliment organisational zero harm target objectives. This course is beneficial to the following personnel:

• Legal experts and government officials involved in investigation-related matters
• Safety Investigators/Auditors
• Safety Regulators
• Those responsible for Safety Information Analysis
• Human Resource Managers
• General and line managers
• Environmental managers
• WHS and injury management personnel

Key Learning Objectives

• Plan and prepare to conduct safety incident investigations based on specific risk criteria
• Identify a structured human factors approach to witness interviewing
• Clearly distinguish between contributing and non-contributing factors via a practical data collection checklist
• Develop a timeline of events and conditions to provide logic to the analysis
• Recognise the human factor contribution to safety incidents in complex circumstances
• Effectively determine contributing factor types to aid in system wide trend analysis
• Identify practical and reasonable improvement opportunities and key learnings
• Produce quality incident investigation reports based on a highly structured repeatable format

Course Information

Instructional Delivery Method: In Person and Live Digital
Prerequisite & Advanced Preparation: Reading material will be sent prior to the course 

Delivered by Dr. Graham Edkins

Organisational Psychologist Dr Graham Edkins is considered one of Australia’s leading Safety Management and Human Factors experts and is regularly retained as an independent safety investigator and human factors expert witness for various civil and criminal matters.

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