Improving Critical Controls in Utilities
Reputable water supply and sewerage services in Australia should play a leading role in prioritising workplace safety by minimising the occurrence of serious injury or fatality (SIF) potential incidents.
Committed to continuous improvement, an organisation in the utilities sector partnered with Incident Analytics to conduct an independent, two-year analysis of workplace incidents. The review focused on governance, reporting practices, and the effectiveness of critical controls in high-risk environments.
Our Approach
Proactively investigating near-misses and hazards helps to prevent repeat incidents and improve safety outcomes.
By applying our Meta Incident Analysis® (MIA) methodology, we were able to deepen the organisation’s understanding of the human, local, and organisational factors contributing to Serious Injury and Fatality (SIF) potential incidents. These insights were used to refine preventive measures and strengthen control strategies.
At a glance:
- Two years’ worth of data
- 685 incidents, injuries, and near misses
- Deep dive into 114 serious incidents with serious injury or fatality potential (SIFp), half of which involved motor vehicles
Research and Insight
To reduce SIFp incidents, we identified the need to prioritise the effectiveness of critical controls in the following high-risk areas:
- addressing vehicle safety risks such as unsecured loads, collisions, loss of control, and pedestrian hazards
- reducing frequent worker exposure to animal-related threats
- strengthening controls to prevent falls and other related incidents at heights
- enhancing risk assessments for materials such as chlorine.
This targeted approach aimed to reduce risk in common high-risk contexts.
In our review, we also discovered that there had been a misallocation of resources toward low-consequence incidents. Refocusing efforts to SIFp incidents would have a much more meaningful impact.
This shift highlighted the importance of:
- strengthening critical controls to address SIFp risks
- accommodating human reliability variations in high-risk work
- implementing rigorous risk assessment measures.
Tangible Outcomes
Guided by these insights, our client implemented immediate containment measures to mitigate risks to its workforce and the public.
Notable positive change after conducting our review:
- The introduction of a new high-potential category in the incident reporting system
- collaboration with Incident Analytics to improve staff skills and engagement in critical control assurance
- implementation of a comprehensive critical control verification framework.
In addition, our client developed a Power BI dashboard that summarised findings and highlighted areas for improvement in four key categories:
- governance
- critical control management
- systems
- people capability.
These actions reinforce the provider's commitment to reducing risks and improving workplace safety.
To learn more about our Meta Incident Analysis (MIA) approach for improving your controls based on incident analysis, contact the Incident Analytics team.
Key insights
87%
of SIF incidents internally under rated as Low or Moderate risk
47%
of non-SIF related incidents mistakenly internally rated high or major risk
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