ACCIDENT INVESTIGATION - A TEST OF YOUR ETHICS, PRINCIPLES,PROFESSIONALISM AND DETERMINATION?

摘要

Accident investigation is an important part of process safety management. It is usually regarded as being an objective analytic process aimed at establishing the root causes of the incident and then the corresponding corrective action. In practice experienced accident investigators of major incidents find that a number of pressures arise which are aimed at influencing the process. The influence may be accidental or deliberate.The parties influencing the investigational process may include senior personnel in the client organisation, Regulator representatives and lawyers. By using case studies the author illustrates examples of the influencing process where the scope of the investigation was changed, where the objective of the investigation was changed to find the 'guilty party' and where a senior person's tries to convince the investigator of the importance of his view of the causes. In addition the difficulties of dealing with parallel investigations and the role of lawyers are covered.The paper covers the rationale behind the influencing processes and the actions that the professional investigator might take to deliver results which reflect an ethical and principled approach.