Posts Tagged ‘incident’

Singapore Flyer Stopped 3 Times Before

Friday, January 2nd, 2009

Straits Times reported that the Singapore Flyer (a larger version of the London Eye) which stopped about 3 weeks ago, had similar incidents before. The previous incidents were relatively minor as compare to the Dec 23 08 incident, where 173 passengers were stuck in the wheel for more than 6 hours.

Incidents like this would have similar organisational factors and cultural issues as in Columbia Space Shuttle incident (see my last post). Being one of the major tourist attractions of Singapore and the fact that there are lots of media and public attention on the flyer, it is not surprising that the organisation is under pressure to push the flyer to function as plan… I hope the on-going inquiry will look into these organisational and cultural issues.

Accident investigation methodology

Tuesday, March 11th, 2008

I developed a series of steps for causal analysis during accident and incident investigation. The main steps are listed below:

  1. Preliminary analysis (causal analysis)
    • Define situational variables (description of the work scenario)
    • List possible incident sequences/scenarios
    • Select key events or sequences to focus on
    • Identify possible causal factors
    • Identify possible controls or systems
  2. Investigate and update causal diagram
  3. Determine pattern of event (see Fifth Discipline ISBN 0385260954)
  4. Identify relevant legislations
  5. Evaluate systemic structure (see Fifth Discipline ISBN 0385260954)
  6. Develop recommendations and implementation plan
  7. Reporting to management and implement recommendations
  8. Finalise and store causal analysis for knowledge management purpose

Pole Choker Incident

Wednesday, February 27th, 2008

Got this alert through CCOHS. It appears that there had been some fall from height incidents during pole climbing and it could be related to failure or inappropraite use of pole chokers.

These devices most probably use some kind of hitching to secure the user onto a pole (e.g. poles to support  power lines) and somehow the choking mechanism failed. However, I would classify these chokers as work positioning methods and not fall arrest. Wish there is more information on the incidents that sparked off the alert.