3 Steps to Planning Your Site Visit

Planning a site visit allows incident investigators to approach the visit with a clear focus and strategy. By outlining specific objectives, investigators can ensure they capture all critical information. A well-planned site visit leads to a more thorough, accurate investigation, helping to identify the root cause and implement effective corrective actions.

Site visits are important. When you are part of an investigation team, seeing spatial arrangements, environmental factors, and the condition of equipment or tools at the site leads to more accurate interpretations of witness statements and documentary evidence. Site visits facilitate the collection and documentation of evidence through photographs, sketches, and notes.

This visual and descriptive information can link evidence to specific events and ensure a clear, reliable record of the scene’s original state, which is valuable in further analysis and potential legal proceedings. It is an important opportunity to collect better information about an incident.

So, how do you plan to conduct a site visit?

Step One: Identify Key Factors

First, collect the basic information you need to begin the investigation.

1. What task was being performed when the incident occurred?

2. Who was the worker (or workers) performing the task?

3. What equipment was used during the task?

All of this information is recorded on your SnapCharT®. Many TapRooT® Investigators do not use the SnapCharT® to its full benefit. The SnapCharT® is not just a timeline of events to present your investigation to management. It is a useful planning tool and central repository for all evidence collection. Are you starting your SnapCharT® later in your investigation process? If so, we encourage you to start using it immediately with whatever information you initially receive and continue your collection efforts from there.

Step Two: Identify Information To Be Collected During the Site Visit

The Human Engineering Basic Cause Category on the TapRooT® Root Cause Tree is especially helpful in collecting physical evidence and planning your site visit. This category helps investigators collect important information about human-machine interface and work environment.

Human-Machine Interface

Gather information on the human-machine interface at the site visit to evaluate user interaction, usability, and any potential areas for improvement in system design. When collecting information to evaluate problems with human-machine interface design, there’s so much to think about. Looking at the near Root Cause “Human-Machine Interface” under the Basic Root Cause “Human Engineering” on the TapRooT® Root Cause Tree and the corresponding TapRooT® Root Cause Tree Dictionary questions will help you outline your approach. Let’s look at an example.

How do you know if better labels or signs would have helped to prevent the incident? You have to do a “go see.” Get out of your chair and go see the work site! Your TapRooT® Tools will help you figure out what to document once you get there. There are eight questions developed by human factors experts in the TapRooT® Root Cause Tree Dictionary about labels. But you don’t have to remember all of those questions, use the TapRooT®Dictionary to preplan for information collection on your SnapCharT®.

The TapRooT® Dictionary will guide you to first determine if any labels or warning signs are missing or if they were sufficient. And how do you determine if a label is insufficient? We’re not all label experts. Again, the human factors experts who contributed to writing the TapRooT® Dictionary will guide you. There are five things they advise to look for including labels that are not visible when moving a control and labels that are obscured by other equipment. It will guide you to look at leads on equipment and equipment settings and switches to see if they are also clearly marked.

Labels are just one example. You also want to look at any displays the worker referred to during the task. A display is a representation of dynamic or changing information for the worker. Displays include meters, gauges, or flat-panel displays. You also want to look at any controls the worker was using. Controls allow a user to provide system input and include handles, buttons, knobs, levers, switches, keyboards, or icons on a touchscreen. The TapRooT® Dictionary provides 20 questions to ask about displays and 13 questions to ask about controls. Again, you don’t have to memorize them. Use the TapRooT® Dictionary to plan your information collection on your SnapCharT®, and take your Dictionary with you to the worksite.

There are five other things to examine under the Near Root Cause, “Human Machine Interface” including arrangment/placement of equipment. The TapRooT® Dictionary systematically guides you through the right questions to ask about each one. Your job as an ethical investigator is to successfully answer the TapRooT® Dictionary questions with the facts: information you have collected.

Work Environment

Go observe housekeeping conditions firsthand, as they can reveal underlying safety hazards and contribute to understanding the incident’s root causes. Often, site visits reveal evidence or details that were not initially reported or noticed. Investigators can locate items of interest, identify relevant environmental factors (e.g., lighting, pathways), and recognize any overlooked hazards or potential sources of the incident​​.

The Basic Cause Category, “Work Environment,” provides ideas about how to determine if the work environment was not conducive to good human performance. A note in the TapRooT® Dictionary instructs, “Human performance can be degraded by environmental stressors. The investigator should walk through the work areas and interview personnel involved to determine whether any of these stressors were present at the time the error was made.”

It’s important to get those workers’ statements about the work environment as soon as possible because work environments change. Emergency responders may move things around while attending to injured workers, weather conditions change, and clean-up and restart happen. So, the investigator is tasked to determine what the work environment was like before changes occurred.

Reading the TapRooT® Dictionary questions for the root causes listed under “Work Environment” will not only help you remember to look for housekeeping issues (such as tools or trash that contributed to the worker tripping and falling), determine if the worker was completing the work in a space that was too small, or if the worker was exposed to an environment that was too hot or too cold, but it will also guide you to other information to collect outside of the work environment.

For example, if the worker was working in an environment that was too hot or too cold, the TapRooT® Dictionary also prompts you to find information about whether the worker was scheduled for excessive amounts of time in this environment, It also prompts you to collect information about whether or not the supervisor should have anticipated the worker needed proper clothing to work in those types of environmental conditions. Supervisors can’t be all-knowing if unexpected weather conditions arise, but if they didn’t provide the worker access to PPE or clothing for the conditions because they need to improve on job site preparation, that’s information you need to collect.

Step 3: Add Information To Be Collected During The Site Visit To Your SnapCharT®

These tools guide investigators through systematic evidence collection, from evaluating the work environment to examining equipment labels, displays, and controls, ensuring that all contributing factors are documented. By capturing these details early, investigators can effectively identify root causes and implement corrective actions that enhance workplace safety and operational reliability.

Want To Learn More?

Flexibility is key in professional development, and we have a course designed to fit your busy schedule. The self-guided format allows you to learn at your own pace, revisit sections that need more focus, and practice skills on your own terms. You don’t need to attend live sessions or adhere to rigid schedules—simply log in when convenient. Register for TapRooT® Self-Guided Course: Evidence Collection & Interviewing Skills.