Safety Moment
Submitted by Saskatchewan Workers’ Compensation Board
The Canadian Standards Association (CSA) recently launched the new Z1000-05 Incident Investigation standard to help employers pre-plan for an incident, learn how to control a scene, gather evidence and hopefully prevent incidents from occurring.
The new standard is part of the CSA’s Z1000 suite of Occupational Health and Safety Standards to assist employers developing or enhancing their safety management systems. The full suite of standards includes hazard identification, inspections, psychological health and safety, managing work in confined spaces, hearing loss prevention, emergency preparedness and the new incident investigation standard.
“Even if an employer starts out with no knowledge of safety, you can purchase from the suite and set up a robust safety management system,” said Chris Budzich, president of Proactive Safety Consulting and representative on the CSA committee that wrote the Z1000-05 standard.
“The Z1000 suite was designed for organizations of any size to implement a safety system, but the way that this has been approached is that each one of the standards could be a stand-alone item if you wished. If you only wished to have information on incident investigation, then the Z1000-05 standard could operate on its own.”
Employers can also use individual sections of all CSA standards to work together. For example, the new Z1000-05 Incident Investigation standard and the Z1000-02 Hazard Identification standard are intended to function together.
“It will guide you line by line through controlling the scene right off the bat to how to control these hazards,” Budzich says.
The investigation standard was developed from the best investigative practices in use, rather than drawing from one particular model of investigation.
“We tried to write it so that it’s very scalable,” says Troy Winters, Chair of the CSA committee that developed the CSA Z1000-05 Investigation Standard and safety advisor for Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE), national office. He explains the practices outlined in the standard can apply to events of any size.
“Every incident needs to be investigated, whether it’s a paper cut or a chemical explosion. All injuries must be reported; all injuries must be investigated.”
This includes investigating the circumstances around dangerous conditions.
“You wouldn’t leave a puddle laying in the middle of the floor at your house. Why is it happening at work?” says Winters. “If it isn’t fully investigated, the next time someone slips, they fall and break their neck. It isn’t just the dangerous conditions, it’s the near misses that cause an incident to take place.”
Phil Germain, vice president of prevention and employer services for the Saskatchewan Workers’ Compensation Board agrees.
“You have to ask the ‘five whys.’ Injuries and fatalities happen because multiple things break down at the same time. You have to ask those questions.”
The investigation standard was developed by 30 people from across Canada – a combined 1,000 years of experience. The committee researched and wrote the standard from scratch to completion in less than two years: the fastest standard ever developed.
For more information about injury prevention and safety training, visit WorkSafe Saskatchewan’s website at www.worksafesask.ca. To learn more about the products available through CSA, visit www.csagroup.org.