Investigate the forklift racking strike in aisle B

What is going on

On Friday 5 September forklift FL-11 struck a racking upright in aisle B while reversing with a raised load. No one was hurt and no stock fell, but the upright deflected and the racking supplier has had to inspect it. The event is recorded as INC-2026-0141 in the incident register with a High risk rating and the status Under investigation. The operator says the aisle was congested with staged pallets and that the reversing camera has been faulty for a week. The pre-start record for FL-11 that morning shows no defects. Two pickers saw the strike. The Safety, Compliance and Training Manager wants a proper investigation, not a blame exercise.

Your brief

Conduct the investigation in line with the incident reporting and investigation procedure: gather the evidence, interview the operator and witnesses, analyse the contributing factors and root causes, propose corrective actions with owners and dates, and update the incident register so that the leadership team can see what happened and what will change.

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 reporting and investigation procedure and the forklift operations and traffic management procedure, and review the register entry and the original incident and hazard report form.
• Review the FL-11 pre-start records in the fleet register for the past two weeks and note whether the reversing camera fault was ever reported.
• Prepare interview questions and record interviews with the operator and the two witnesses, focusing on what happened and the conditions in the aisle.
• Check the stock register for pallets staged in aisle B that morning and photograph or sketch the aisle layout at the time of the strike.
• Work through the sequence of events and use the five whys to identify contributing factors and root causes, separating individual actions from system issues.
• Draft corrective and preventive actions with an owner and a due date for each, for example changes to staging rules, pre-start checklist items and camera repair.
• Update INC-2026-0141 in the incident register with the findings, root causes and actions, and set the status to Actions open.
• Prepare a toolbox talk record using the template to share the lessons with both shifts.

What someone in this role would produce

• Written investigation report with sequence of events, contributing factors and root causes
• Interview notes for the operator and witnesses
• Updated incident register entry with corrective actions, owners and due dates
• Completed toolbox talk record ready for delivery