What this check covers

This free check tests whether investigations explain how the system failed or stop at the injured person, the unsafe act or the broken rule. Nine questions cover whether the area is made safe and evidence preserved before assumptions shape the story, whether investigators gather several forms of evidence, whether people are interviewed to understand how the work made sense at the time rather than to extract an admission of fault, whether the investigation looks beyond the unsafe act to supervision, design, workload, competence, planning, maintenance and organisational conditions, whether it identifies which controls were absent, failed, bypassed or did not match the real work, whether similar incidents and near misses elsewhere are checked, whether corrective actions are linked to causes and aimed at stronger controls rather than only retraining, whether the effectiveness of those actions is checked afterwards, and whether lessons are shared without turning every incident into a blame message. Three questions are safety-critical. It is not tied to a single regulation; it reflects the investigation and recording duties in the Act and good investigation practice. It is written for whoever runs incident investigations, from supervisors to safety managers. “Operator error” is usually the start of an investigation, not the end, and the questions are built around that idea.