Near Miss Reporting as a Safety Tool

Book excerpt: Near Miss Reporting as a Safety Tool arises from a meeting of safety professionals, academicians, and consultants from Western-Europe and Canada held in Eindhoven, the Netherlands, in September 1989. The book deals with near-miss reporting in various systems, mostly in the context of errors and accidents. The book begins by discussing the effects of bad management decisions in the design phase and a framework that will describe or manage these near misses through reporting, description, analysis, interpretation, and suggestions. Seven modules that compose this framework, called the Near Miss Management System (NMMS), along with pertinent cases, are explained. The book notes that near misses are ignored because of technical myopia, action-oriented organizations, event-focused organizations, consequence driven, and variables in quality of reporting. The organizational and management aspects of the NMMS are then analyzed within the commonly accepted culture and experience of the company. The book also presents comparative application of near miss information systems covering a wide range of industrial and transport environment. Such presentation allows differences and similarities to come into view more easily. The text will prove valuable for safety professionals in the nuclear and chemical industry and in road, railway, and air traffic management. Professors and students in safety management will likewise appreciate this book.