In order to strengthen environmental safety, it is important to learn from one's own incidents, near misses and unsafe situations. Incidents at other companies can also be instructive. Especially when it concerns companies with high-risk processes and hazardous substances.

An incident may reveal a weakness in a safety management system. Investigating the incident increases the understanding of this system. If necessary, action can then be taken to improve deficiencies in the system.

In practice, it has been observed repeatedly that there are serious barriers to the sharing of information on incidents and near misses. This is the case in the exchange of safety information between companies and between companies and supervisory authorities. By removing a number of identified barriers, including the 'risk-rule reflex' and the 'transparency paradox', the learning process can be optimised. Obviously, this is only possible if a company first learns from its own accidents.

The aim of the incident learning project is to improve the safety system within which the incident took place.

In addition, the aim is to share information about incidents at companies in the (petro)chemical industry. By learning more from each other about imperfections in the system, the safety of this industry and its chain partners can be strengthened.

To this end, companies must be willing to share their experiences in learning from incidents with other companies. An important spin-off of this mutual learning from incidents is the increased confidence in Brzo companies by the government and the environment. Trust will improve if the chemical sector provides more insight into how it learns from incidents.

The project, carried out by Crisislabconsists of a number of steps, including:

• Carrying out a literature review and its documentation;
• Developing the guide Better learning from incidents in the (petro)chemical industry that addresses the collection of learning points at three levels: individual level, sector level and system level;
• Making the guide available to participants in Safety First and other relevant platforms such as the Regional Safety Networks.

The guide, which was published by Veiligheid Voorop in January 2020, is an extra-legal supplement to the Brzo requirements. This guidance is also extra-legal for the 'almost' Brzo companies.

Knowledge base: Frequently asked questions about learning from incidents

Related SDN projects:

1. LVI 2018-0003: Blockchain application pilot for exchange of near misses in the (petro)chemical industry
2. LVI 2021-0007: Pilot on better learning from incidents
3. LVI 2021-0008: Pilot e-learning Learning from Incidents