Professional Documents
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Root Immediate Cause
Root Immediate Cause
Types of Incident
• Near-miss – an unplanned event that had the potential to cause injury, ill-health,
loss or damage but did not, in fact, do so (a worker was narrowly missed by oil
spurting from a burst pipeline).
• Dangerous occurrence – a specified event that has been reported to the relevant
authority by statute law (e.g. a major gas release).
Immediate causes are the unsafe acts and unsafe conditions that gave rise to the event itself.
These will be the things that occurred at the time and place of the accident. For example, a
worker slips on a puddle of oil spilt on the floor - immediate causes: the slip hazard (unsafe
condition), the worker walking through it (unsafe act).
Underlying or root causes are the things that lie behind the immediate causes. Often root causes
will be failures in the management system, such as: