Engineering controls and written procedures — covered in the rest of this topic — only work if the organization behind them investigates failures honestly and trains people well before a failure happens. This guide covers the two management-level responsibilities that separate a Class A operator from someone who simply follows a plant's safety program: running an incident investigation that actually finds the root cause, and designing the training and culture that prevents the next one.
Incident Investigation Methodology
A plant safety event doesn't have to result in an injury to be worth investigating. Effective programs investigate across a spectrum:
- Near misses — a gas alarm that triggered during a digester entry with no injury, a dropped tool near an open basin, a cylinder that nearly tipped during transport. These are free information about a failure mode before it costs