Edition 2.1 - March 2020 DOWNLOAD
Introduction
Working with explosive hazards involves risks that are managed by ensuring that all staff are appropriately trained and supervised and that they use procedures and equipment that are designed to minimize an accidental explosion. The procedures and equipment are also designed to minimize the injurious consequences of an accident explosion should one occur. By definition, an accident is an unplanned event. It may be caused by a coincidence of events that was not predicted, by errors in management, training or activity, by a lack of knowledge or by apparent carelessness. Risk management within the LMAC and the IA shall be designed to avoid accidents and to learn from those that occur in a cycle of continuous assessment and improvement. See NMAS 07.14 Risk Management. To assist with the risk management cycle, structures must be in place to investigate and report both accidents and incidents. Investigation and reporting shall be conducted in a timely, coherent, and comprehensive manner, according to the standards and guidelines outlined in this NMAS. Objective investigation and standardized reporting allow all relevant information to be collected and presented in an accessible format that allows evaluation and analysis leading to conclusions that are an essential part of the risk management cycle that the LMAC uses in its pursuit of excellence in QM. Identification of the causes of accidents/incidents allows for evidence based analysis leading to improvements that avoid or mitigate risk. Accordingly, the main purpose of accident/incident investigation in HMA is not to apportion blame, it is to identify causes and ensure that they are addressed so that the circumstances surrounding the accident are not repeated in future.