Investigating safety incidents is rarely easy and doing so remotely can be even harder. But in the new normal of today where people and organisations are physically distancing, so must investigators. So, what does an ICAM investigation look like in the time of COVID-19? I recently received a call from a client regarding a fatality that had occurred at one of their mine sites. The incident scene had been secured, family members, local authorities and the corporate office had b

For those of you who read my previous article you will be familiar with Zoey, our 5 year old daughter. It seems that she is becoming my inspiration and the common theme to all my discussions around ‘everything investigation’. So, here she is again demonstrating with a scenario which most of us can relate to, another important principle of ICAM and reinforcing that you can honestly ICAM anything… Dinner time is dreaded in our household. Zoey is easily distracted and we sp

Historically incident investigations have been seen as reactive in nature. We failed to prevent an adverse outcome and so we investigate to try to understand where things went wrong, what happened and more importantly why it happened so that we can try to prevent it from happening again. It is a reactive process that if conducted effectively should result in proactive improvements in an organisation’s incident prevention measures. Incident investigation should be seen as risk

So, the conversation normally starts like this: ‘So Geoff, what do you do with yourself?’ My normal response is that I work 80% of my time as an aviation consultant, about 15% of my time teaching investigation techniques and 5% of my time working as a contracted, independent investigator. Once we have got past the usual questions of ‘Do you watch Air Crash Investigations’ and ‘What happened to MH370?’ the conversation usually jumps to the contracted, independent investigator

So you’ve done the Incident Cause Analysis Method (ICAM) Training…. and from the feedback we receive, attendees say it was a great course and they learnt some valuable techniques for incident investigation. During the course, of course you listened intently to the Safety Wise Facilitator. During the Syndicated Exercise, all the theory fit together and you “got it”. You received the initial incident notification, you came up with a data collection plan (PEEPO), you then receiv