
Good Catch
How do you define a good catch vs a safety observation.
How do we avoid “Steve wore his hi-viz today” types of reports that, while valid, aren’t really valuable?
Thank you!
Comments (8)

We define good catches generally as something that would have caused an injury or incident had it not been corrected. Our good catch report requires an action plan to be added, so it avoids people from putting in random observations and just things that were caught that needed to be corrected. I'd recommend training on examples of what you are looking for vs examples of what wouldn't be as useful.

Been working in safety management for over 52 years. I got to admit I have never heard of a "good catch". It sounds like a good one though, except understanding how hard it is to even get near miss reports, I would say they are all "good catches"!
I would like to think my wife of 47 years would say all things considered I was a "good catch!" Most days she would say yes, but there have been a few......

Well a safety observation in my experience is a process to evaluate the interaction between a person and a standard work process. It’s a risk assessment tool. Unlike a risk assessment which evaluates risk with how the task should be done , it evaluates risk in how the task is being done. Most often focused on unsafe behaviors but human organizational practices expand in the idea quite significantly and add a systems approach to the process.
A good catch is something that could potentially happen… but has not or did not result in an injury or property damage.
A near miss is something that actually happened that could have resulted in an injury or property damage.
I just read a really good book “best practices in accident investigation “ by the assp which expands on the processes and definitions found in the ansi standard.