How to model and evaluate the incident reporting process of a company?

Companies need to control several different sectors of corporate safety and security including, for example, occupational health and safety, environmental safety, premises security, crime prevention, rescue operations and emergency planning, information security, and personnel security. All these sectors contribute towards the total corporate safety and security of a company. By collecting information about different types of incidents, a company can learn about how to prevent future incidents, and thus make the company safer. Incidents, as referred to here, include accidents, near-misses, and other deviations such as hazardous situations. A company can internally collect information about those event chains that can lead to accidents. The time and place, the object and consequences, and causes and preventive and corrective actions, are all examples of important information collected about incidents. Even if a company recognizes the importance of preventive data, it might be difficult to organize the collection, handling, and utilization of this information. Computer software is nowadays essential, but it can not address all the aspects associated with the incident reporting process. The organization of the incident reporting process was investigated at VTT using three case studies during 2005-2006. Key questions of the study were: 1) how to model all the parts of the incident reporting process, and 2) how to evaluate the quality of incident reporting process. All the actions, the different actors, and the different documents and information flow relating to the incident reporting process were modelled. The important phases of the process were: a) identifying an incident and acting immediately (understanding hazards), b) informing the supervisor about the incident (motivational factors), c) handling the incident reports (systematic documentation), d) investigating the incident (understanding analysis frameworks), e) decision making about solutions and improvements by utilizing the collected data, f) implementing and monitoring the corrective and preventive actions (reacting), and f) observing the general view and evaluating the incident reporting process. The study contained three case companies: an oil refinery, a chemical factory, and an amusement park. Three incident reporting processes were modelled with the data collected from the companies. The three case models were used to develop an evaluation tool for the incident reporting process. This paper discusses the modelling and evaluation of the incident reporting process. The main purpose is to show that modelling of the incident reporting process gives an opportunity for a company to evaluate and improve the quality of the incident reporting process. Based on the research carried out, principles and ideas for assessing the different phases of the incident reporting process are presented.