Investigate the grinder guard near miss

What is going on

On 9 September 2026 an apprentice in Bay 2 removed the guard from an angle grinder to fit a cutting disc and started the grinder before refitting the guard. The leading hand stopped the apprentice before the disc touched the work. The event is entered in the WHS incident register as INC-26-037 and is under investigation. A guard failure on a grinder can throw a shattered disc at high speed, so Rohan Pillai treats this as a high potential near miss. He wants an investigation that looks at the grinder, the guard availability, the apprentice's training and supervision and the pressure on the job, not simply at the apprentice's decision.

Your brief

Conduct the investigation under the incident reporting procedure, gather facts from the people and records involved, identify direct and system causes, and produce an investigation report with corrective actions, owners and dates, updating the register and preparing a toolbox talk to share the lesson.

Work through it

You do not need to do it all. Doing a few of these will show you what the work is like. Your ticks and notes stay on this device.

• Read the Incident and Hazard Reporting Procedure and the register entry INC-26-037 and plan the investigation: who to interview, what records to gather and what to inspect.
• Interview the apprentice and the leading hand separately, recording facts about the task, the disc change, the guard, the time pressure and the supervision at the time.
• Inspect the grinder and its guard, check the Plant and Equipment Register for its inspection status and check the Training and Competency Matrix for the apprentice's power tool training and induction records.
• Review the Work Health and Safety Policy and the Job Card Register entry for the job the apprentice was working on to understand the schedule pressure.
• Analyse the evidence to identify the direct cause and the underlying system causes, such as guard availability, disc change method, supervision ratio and training gaps.
• Write the investigation report and propose corrective actions using the hierarchy of control, each with an owner and a due date.
• Update the register entry INC-26-037 with the findings and actions and change its status to Actions open.
• Prepare a Toolbox Talk Record for the next Tuesday talk that shares the lesson without naming the apprentice.

What someone in this role would produce

• Interview notes for the apprentice and the leading hand
• Investigation report with direct and system causes
• Corrective action list with owners and due dates
• Updated register entry INC-26-037
• Toolbox Talk Record for the incident alert