Near miss
An unplanned event that did not cause injury or damage but could have; recorded and investigated because it is the warning before the accident.
A near miss is the load that swung past someone's head, the excavator that stopped a metre from the operative, the board that fell from the scaffold onto an empty walkway. Nothing happened, and the same event tomorrow puts someone in hospital. Sites with a high near-miss reporting rate and a low accident rate are not lucky; they are hearing about the problem while it is still free to fix. The ratio matters less than the culture: people report near misses when they are thanked for it and see something change, and stop when they are blamed.
A near-miss report captures what happened, where, when, who was involved, what could have happened, why it happened (the immediate cause and the underlying one) and what is being done. It goes into the same system as incidents, is reviewed weekly, feeds the toolbox talk topics and, in the pattern, tells you which control has quietly stopped working. SSIP assessors and principal contractors ask for the near-miss log as evidence that monitoring is real.
Where it comes from
- No statutory reporting duty for near misses in themselves; some are dangerous occurrences reportable under RIDDOR 2013 (for example a scaffold collapse or contact with an overhead line with no injury).
- Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations 1999 reg.5: arrangements for monitoring and review.
Questions people ask
Should near misses be reported to the HSE?
Only where the event is a dangerous occurrence on the RIDDOR list. Everything else is recorded and investigated internally. The internal record is what matters.
How do I get people to report them?
Make it take thirty seconds on a phone, thank the reporter publicly, act on it visibly, and never discipline anyone for the thing they reported. Reporting rates rise within weeks.
Near miss, handled on a phone
SiteLynx puts the RAMS, permits, inspections, audits, plant checks and records behind every term in this glossary on the crew's phones, signed on site, with a PDF at the end. 14 days free, no card.
Start free trial