By Brent Thesing, Safety Director, Wieser Brothers General Contractor, Inc.
In any industry, safety incidents, quality issues, or operational delays are going to happen. However, the key to continuous improvement is figuring out “why” the problem occurred, not just what happened on the surface. That’s where conducting a Root Cause Analysis (RCA) should be a mindset that encourages teams to dig deeper, ask better questions, and ultimately prevent issues from repeating themselves.
One of the biggest mistakes is fixing a symptom without understanding the real reason behind it. For example, an employee suffered a minor hand injury while using a chop saw. The immediate cause was improper hand placement. Upon investigation, we found the root cause was a lack of formal training on tool use and no visual reminders of hand safety on-site. Corrective actions include implementing mandatory chop saw training for all new hires and posting hand placement decals on all saw stations.
Root Cause Analysis forces us to take a step back and approach problems from multiple angles. It encourages the “Five Whys” method, asking “why” again and again until we reach the true source of the issue. This process often reveals gaps in training, communication breakdowns, unclear procedures, or deeper organizational issues that otherwise go unnoticed.
Doing accurate and in-depth RCA can truly shift the culture of a company. When employees start to understand the “Why” behind an event, they begin to feel more empowered. It becomes less about blame and more about solving problems together. That kind of approach builds trust, accountability, and improvement that sticks.
Every incident has a story behind it, and those stories hold valuable lessons. The best-performing companies take the time to learn from every near miss, every failure, and even small disruptions. Over time, this builds a system that’s better prepared to protect workers.
In closing, RCA is about looking beyond quick fixes and more about creating long-term solutions. It takes effort, it takes honest conversations, and sometimes it means facing uncomfortable truths. But, it can be one of the most powerful ways to improve performance, reduce risk, and strengthen your team.
Asking yourself and your team “why did this really happen?” will be the first step toward doing better tomorrow.
