Quality and efficiency of investigations

The Dutch Safety Board Act specifies that the Dutch Safety Board must conduct its investigations as efficiently as possible and in the shortest possible time. This ensures that lessons can be learned from an occurrence, while it is still relatively fresh in the minds of those involved. In this context, the Dutch Safety Board paid extra attention to investigation turnaround times in 2022.

The Turnaround Times project explored how the Dutch Safety Board could conduct its investigations more efficiently in order to complete them within a year, without compromising on quality. For this purpose, information was collected from investigators, Management Team members and Board members. In addition, several investigations were mapped onto the standard flowchart to identify bottlenecks. The project identified several points for improvement. These are mainly related to shortening and streamlining existing processes, as well as to the necessity to structurally pay more attention to turnaround times. Examples include reducing the time it takes to define a project structure, making timely delivery a more frequent topic of discussion in meetings, better utilizing project management skills and improving progress monitoring. The Dutch Safety Board began implementing changes to achieve these aims in 2022.