What Is A Near Miss Report & Why They Are Important To Construction Safety

Ask any contractor to tell you about a close call they had on the jobsite and get ready for what is likely a very good story —there are probably a few of them. While these stories make for compelling conversation, they represent something much more valuable: missed opportunities to prevent future accidents.

By implementing a systematic near-miss reporting program, construction companies can transform these close calls from mere anecdotes into powerful safety tools that protect workers and reduce costs.

What is a Near Miss?

A near miss is an unplanned event on a construction site that has the potential to cause injury, illness or property damage but does not result in actual harm due to chance or timely intervention.

You can also consider an occurrence as a near miss if it would have caused harm if someone had been in the vicinity. For example, if someone drops a hammer off the second story of a building, it doesn’t have to come close to hitting someone to be considered a near miss.

Some other examples of near misses are:

• Someone trips on an extension cord but doesn’t harm themselves
• A forklift bumps a skid of material, and it teeters but does not fall
• An extension ladder tips over, narrowly missing a parked truck

The only difference between these occurrences and an actual accident is luck. Had the extension cord been next to a stairwell, the forklift been moving a bit faster, or if the truck had been parked differently, the outcomes could have been disastrous. This is why you need a well-developed construction safety program.

What to Do When a Near Miss Occurs

In short, when a near miss occurs, treat it like it was an accident.

Every near miss should trigger an investigation into what went wrong, determining all the contributing factors. Then, changes need to be implemented to prevent a future accident.

In order for the near-miss process to work, your crews need to know they are responsible for reporting them when they happen. Had my repair guy not gotten stuck in the roof, I probably wouldn’t have found out about it because there was no injury to report, and we didn’t have a near-miss program.

Also, there must be no fear of repercussion when reporting a near miss. You absolutely cannot ask someone to report one and then reprimand the error, especially if it was a human error.

A near miss must be looked at as a learning opportunity that will protect the future safety of all your employees.

What are the Benefits of Implementing a Near-Miss Reporting Program?

Handling incidents as a near miss rather than waiting for the inevitable accident to occur means your job sites are safer. Safer job sites are, first and foremost, important to your employees, but they also save your company money.

The benefits of employing a close-call documentation system include getting all the changes and modifications that follow an accident to improve safety at your company without having to report an actual incident.

Lowering the number of reportable incidents means your experience modification rating (EMR) will go down, and that, in turn, will lower your workers’ compensation and insurance premiums!

How SafetyHQ® Makes Near Miss Reporting a Breeze

You should already be convinced that tracking, investigating, and following up on every single near miss at your company makes logical sense and will reduce your workload down the line. The challenge many companies face is finding the time and resources to implement an effective near miss reporting system.

The advantages of using a safety management system like SafetyHQ for near-miss incident tracking are numerous. Every SafetyHQ client receives a custom-built incident reporting and follow-up form, making it easy for:

• Your foreman to fill out a quick form about what happened, capturing all the relevant info and even pictures
• You to be immediately notified of the near miss
• You or a supervisor to complete an investigation on contributing factors
• Management to review graphs and trends involved
• Positive changes to be implemented

By understanding that the advantages of utilizing a near-miss reporting system ultimately lead to safer worksites, reduced costs, and improved hazard prevention protocols, you can protect your most valuable asset—your employees.