Near Miss and Significant Incident Reporting
Our approach to near miss and significant incident reporting was founded following a comprehensive review of our past fatal incidents, from which four key learnings emerged:
- Low injury frequency rates do not mean low fatality rates.
- High near miss reporting often correlates with declining injuries or fatalities.
- Injury reduction programs alone will not prevent fatalities – a complementary, focused effort is required on fatal risk.
- Hazard identification and risk awareness are fundamental to success.
A key improvement is the ability to learn from near miss and significant incidents (a safety incident that had potential for an outcome rated at level 4 or above in the BHP Billiton Consequence Severity Table) and apply corrective interventions before the same underlying causes manifest as more serious incidents. We encourage the reporting of Near Miss and Significant Incidents as these provide very valuable free lessons.
When a trend of similar incidents, whether internal or external to the Company, is identified and common learning points are evident, a Repeat Significant Incident Alert is compiled. These alerts are distributed broadly across the Company and provide a succinct summary of the events and common learnings. In addition, these alerts contain links to further information and act as a catalyst for safety toolbox talks, contributing to greater safety awareness.
We have also commenced highlighting separately the close call events where key preventive barriers were breached. We call these Zero Barrier Incidents and they represent our most critical learnings. Our ability to take heed of the signals from these near miss events is crucial to our efforts in eliminating injuries and fatalities.
Read more: Safety>Our Performance>Near Miss and Significant Incident Reporting.
