The importance of a near hit

The construction industry is fraught with potential hazards and incidents. These need to be managed in a systematic and thorough way to ensure the organisation is legally compliant and conforms to industry standards.

Many safety initiatives are reactive and not proactive – incidents could be prevented by putting more focus on preventative activities such as risk assessment and “near hit” reporting.

Through identifying activities and tasks at a particular construction site, all risks should be identified together with the potential hazards which might arise. It is then necessary to rate these in a risk assessment and to put corrective and preventative measures in place to mitigate the identified significant risks.

The task of managing this process and ensuring the effective implementation of the corrective and preventative measures may seem onerous. Metrix has, however, created a software solution – IsoMetrix – which enables a thorough process flow for managing all safety initiatives. All the required steps are recorded and communicated via the software in real time.

Recognising and reporting near-hit incidents can make a major difference to the safety of workers. Too often, high potential risk incidents which have occurred but have not actually resulted in any injury, illness or damage, are simply forgotten and not reported. These often precede loss-incurring events which could have been prevented had the near-miss incidents been identified, reported and investigated. By reporting these quickly and easily on IsoMetrix, trends can be identified and preventative actions can then be implemented and tracked to completion.

The IsoMetrix Health, Safety, Environment and Community (HSEC) solution is particularly pertinent to the construction industry. Safety modules include risk assessment, incident and near hit management, preventative and corrective action manager, Material Safety Data Sheets (MSDS) manager, Personal Protection Equipment (PPE) manager, Inspection manager and Audit manager.

Also included is the Contracting Management module, which enables the organisation to ensure contracting management compliance from all subcontractors and suppliers.

The IsoMetrix HSEC solution follows the requirements of OHSAS 18001, ISO 14001 and ISO 9001. All modules are visible through the QlikView analytics dashboards which allow real-time analysis of the business and its risks. What cannot be measured cannot be controlled. By having a bird’s-eye view of the organisation, IsoMetrix users have access to the information they need in order to make better decisions.