When: Wednesday 13 September 2023

Enhancements to Event Investigations

"Standard Investigation" tab layout enhancements

We have enhanced the overall layout of the Standard Investigations tab in the Events register, to draw user's attention to the event's severity and risk scores. 

1. The Event's Severity is now shown at the top of the tab to inform the user (read-only, reflects the value selected in the Event Details tab).
   Note that you can pre-define Event Severities in Settings > Events > Event Severity. The text that you will see in the Severity field will come from the severity Description in Settings.
   
   
   
   
2. The Event Outcome Assessment section has been added at the top of the tab. It shows the  following:
   • A non-mandatory Impact field (values are sourced from the Risk Matrix in Settings)
   • The Actual and Potential Event risk scores, which previously were displayed at the bottom of the tab. Rather than separately selecting the event's actual and potential probability and consequence from the drop-downs, as previously, the user can now open the Risk Matrix to make their selection in a more visual and convenient way.
     

     Note that you can choose to turn off Incident Outcome Actual and Potential in Event Standard Investigation tab by unticking the box in Settings > General > Options and Preferences.

     

     
     
     
3. A non-mandatory Others Consulted field is now available to capture additional people involved in the investigation, if applicable.
4. Another non-mandatory field, Investigation Notes, has also been added to allow entering such notes separately from the existing Findings field.
   
   
   
   
5. The section previously called View Witness Statements has been relabelled to Information from Witnesses and Others, to allow for wider range of details. It also allows entering the date and time when the information was provided as well as URLs (previously you could only attach files). Additionally, you can save an Information Statement Template (for example, a Word or PDF file) at the bottom of the Event Fields Mandatory screen in Settings > Risk, and then access that template from the Information from Witnesses and Others section of an event, so that you could provide it to the event witnesses and ensure the information you get from them is uniform and complete.
   
   

"5 Whys" Event Investigation Methodology

Enabling "5 Whys" analysis for Events

We have added an ability to use the "5 Why" analysis methodology for event investigations. You can enable this ability separately for each type of events in Settings (go to Events > Event Fields Mandatory > Event Mandatory Fields section > Standard Investigation Methodology).

You can also request entering at least some of the 5 Whys before an Event can be completed, just like this can be done for corrective actions or causal analysis. 

Using "5 Whys" analysis

When the "5 Whys" analysis method is enabled for an event type, you will see the 5 Whys Methodology section in the Standard Investigation tab when editing events of this type.

When adding or editing an analysis, you can include up to five consecutive statement, each detailing the previous one, with the final statement considered to be the root cause of the issue. You don't have to include all five statements each time.

You can now also include one or more of the Final 5 Why Statements as a starting point in your Causal Analysis. 

Note that the number before the Final Why Statement in the Causal Analysis register is the 5 Why's ID.