How to log and investigate near misses

Open Health & Safety in the sidebar. The quick actions at the top include Create H&S report and Log a near miss, which is the same form with the type already set.

The form runs in three steps: report details, description, then additional details.

One form covers three kinds of event, chosen in Type.

The type also drives the reference: a near miss is saved as NMR, so you can tell what a report is from its number alone.

The left-hand panel is who, what and when.

The right-hand panel takes the address where it happened: Address 1, Town/City, County and Postcode are all required.

On a large site, use Address 2 for the part of it that matters, the plot, the block, the level. "Second lift, east elevation" is more use to an investigator than a postcode.

Step two opens with Description, which is required. Write what happened, in order, in plain language.

Describe the event and the conditions, not the person. "Board was not secured and was dislodged by wind" tells you what to fix. "Scaffolder was careless" does not, and makes the next person think twice about reporting anything at all.

Beside the description sits Photos / Videos, which takes files by drag and drop.

Photographs taken before anything is moved are the single most useful thing on a report. If the scene has already been made safe, say so in the description.

Underneath, Sync lists your Health & Safety users (notified automatically). They are told as soon as the report is saved, without anyone having to remember to forward it.

Notify additional users copies in anyone else: the contracts manager, the project lead, whoever needs to know on this particular job.

The last step asks Any resolutions? Use it for what was done at the time: the area was closed off, the board was re-secured, the machine was taken out of service.

It can be left empty and filled in later, but a line here is what separates a report that led to something from one that just got filed.

Choose Save Report. Sync confirms it has been created, opens the record, and the notifications go out.

If the form will not move on, a required field is outlined in red further up. The date is the usual one, because it has to be picked from the calendar.

The record shows the details, the description and the resolutions side by side, with the status, reference, date and time, project, location, whether it was reported to a manager, who reported it and any witnesses.

Three actions sit at the top: Edit report, Update status and Create investigation.

A report has two statuses, and only two: Open and Archived. New reports are Open.

Archive it when it is genuinely closed out, not to tidy the list. Open reports are what the dashboard counts, so an archived one that was never resolved is a lesson quietly thrown away.

Where something deserves a proper look, Create investigation opens a linked form. It carries the report's reference, type, date and location across, and asks for:

• Conclusions, what you found.
• Learning points and recommendations, what changes as a result.
• An investigation report and supporting files, if you have produced one.

Save and link investigation attaches it to the report, so the event and what you concluded about it stay together.

The Reports module under Health & Safety lists every report across every project, filtered by status, reference, project name, who reported it, type or date.

This is what you open when an auditor asks what happened on a job, or when you want to know whether this is the third time something similar has been logged.

The Health & Safety page has a Near miss analysis tab with a date range and four views.