ABSTRACT
The investigation of incidents is an important task in industry. Serious incidents that can lead to fatalities, injuries or serious plant damage occur. In the first place, the investigation must determine what actually went wrong and then recommend what must be done to rectify the situation and to ensure that the incident never recurs. Root cause analysis determines the reason for an incident having occurred. The practise is predicated on the belief that problems are best solved by attempting to correct or eliminate root causes, as opposed to merely addressing immediately obvious symptoms. This chapter describes the most common incident investigation methodologies: the Five Whys technique, the Kepner-Tregoe technique or its derivatives, the ASSET methodology, and Fault trees. The chapter also studies some cases of well-known incidents, namely, Chernobyl, Piper Alpha, Flixborough and the Hyatt Regency Hotel.
