NRCoP present: The Hidden Signals: Enhancing Regulatory Oversight through Near-Miss Reporting
Jodi Goodall’s 2023 NRCoP Conference presentation ‘Adapting the Near-Miss Framework for your Regulatory Agency’, shared an organisational perspective about near-miss reporting. It provided insights to regulators on the value of near-miss data to prevent catastrophic events. Some takeaways:
Near-misses and precursor events precede every major disaster – often in patterns. These are early warning signs of failure.
Regulators must understand their industry’s catastrophic risks & key controls to know which near-misses to collect.
Near-miss reporting is 50-50 psychology and risk imagination, so those reporting near-misses need to know they won’t be unjustly treated, as well as educated on what ‘could’ happen.
Experiencing a big event is rare – the regulator is in the perfect position to lift their industry’s risk knowledge by collecting, analysing and sharing near-misses ‘as learning opportunities!’
Now, in a follow-up presentation hosted by NOPSEMA in Perth, Jodi will expand on that presentation, from the regulator’s perspective. Exploring the challenges regulators face when collecting and using near-miss data, such as the tension between making it safe to report and taking appropriate action. Or collecting data in a way that you can effectively use it, to avoid ‘guilty knowledge’.
Jodi will use case studies to show how successful risk-based regulators encourage a healthy level of near-miss reporting, make meaning of near-miss data, use it to inform targeted programs and interventions, and nurture industry to learn the lessons near-miss data offers – before major failure.