Enhancing Cross-Sector Learning from Incidents

The Enhanced Learning from Incidents (ELFi) project aims to understand and provide both insight and potential solutions to ensure lessons learned in one sector of society or industry help prevent injuries and accidents in another.

Each year, millions of workers worldwide lose their lives due to occupational accidents and work-related diseases, while millions more experience non-fatal work-related injuries. Despite decades of safety improvements, similar incidents continue to occur across industries, often because vital lessons remain locked in silos, delayed by legal processes or buried in technical reports.

The Thomas Ashton Institute (TAI), the University of Manchester (UoM), and EEMUA (the Engineering Equipment and Materials Users Association) today announce the start of the Enhanced Learning from Incidents (ELFi) project, a research initiative developed with the Hazards Forum and other industry partners to change this.

Caption: Photograph taken during launch ceremony: Seated (left to right): Dr Saeed Reza Mohandes (Principal Investigator, University of Manchester); Dr Stefan Kukula (Chief Executive, EEMUA). Standing (left to right): Dr Meini Su (Co-Investigator, University of Manchester); Professor Martie van Tongeren (Deputy Director, Thomas Ashton Institute); Nick Shaw (Hazards Forum); Matt Cleaver (Chair, EEMUA Council); Dave Bright (EEMUA Project Lead); Professor Clara Cheung (Co-Investigator, University of Manchester).

"Organisations rarely lack incident reports; what is often missing is a reliable way to recognise when a lesson from another sector applies to them, and to act on it before a similar event happens. By working alongside EEMUA, its members, regulators and safety professionals from the outset, we will build a strong evidence base and then co-design and pilot a framework and toolkit that turn incident data into contextualised, actionable learning across sectors."
Prof Martie van Tongeren, Deputy Director, Thomas Ashton Institute for Risk and Regulatory Research

"Most industries already investigate their incidents carefully, but those lessons rarely travel beyond the sector, or even the site, where they happened. Over the course of this initiative, we'll work with EEMUA members, regulators, and safety professionals to find out why, and co-design a framework and toolkit that are tested on real industry cases rather than on paper. We'd welcome organisations from any sector that want to help shape it."
Dr Saeed Reza Mohandes, Principal Investigator, The University of Manchester