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Root Cause / Cause Analysis
WD Associates provides highly experienced industry personnel to perform Root Cause / Cause Analysis services for significant events that have occurred at your facility. In addition, WD performs independent reviews and provides oversight and mentoring of the development and implementation of effective actions at your facility to aid in ensuring performance problems and gaps are identified before they result in a loss of production, regulatory compliance issues or personnel injuries.
Root Cause / Cause Analysis services include:
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Corrective Action Program (CAP) development and Implementation
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Root Cause Analysis Team support
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Independent Reviews of Cause Analysis
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Major equipment failures investigations
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Severe personnel injury/fatality investigations
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Training and Mentoring leaders in Performance Improvement and CAP
Assessments / Inspection Support
WD Associates provides highly experienced industry personnel to assist clients in performing assessments/inspections at your facility; we also perform independent reviews of assessments/inspections as requested. In addition, WD develop assessment programs to enable clients in identifying performance gaps and operational vulnerabilities at your facility.
Assessments / Inspection Support services include:
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CAP Program Effectiveness Assessments
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Training Program Assessments
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Safety Program Assessments
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NRC IP 95001/95002/95003 Support
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NERC Assessment support
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NERC Cold Weather Assessments
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Vegetation management safety event analysis
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Plant Operational Performance & Material Condition Assessments
Performance Improvement Mentoring and Support
WD Associates provides highly experienced personnel to help clients become more effective in solving problems ranging from targeting fixes for specific problems to overall integrated organizational improvements.
Performance Improvement / Mentoring and Support services include:
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Development and implementation of continuous improvement activities
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Support for analysis and resolution of performance gaps
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Performance Assessment Mentoring and Support
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Analysis of Safety Culture issues
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Organizational Effectiveness Assessments
Cause Evaluation Group
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Thinking Like an Analyst
Post 3: Barrier Thinking—Even When Nothing Went Wrong
Sharpening the Saw Series
What if your best root cause tools could help you prevent problems, not just solve them?
If you've been trained in cause analysis, you’ve used barrier analysis to understand how and why things went wrong. But here’s the secret: the most effective analysts don't wait for a failure to start thinking about barriers.
They apply barrier thinking daily—during observations, planning, conversations, and walkdowns—to reduce risk and reinforce reliability.
Let’s talk about how you can do the same.
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Does Root Cause Analysis Put Blame on the Individual?
When something goes wrong at work—an equipment failure, a safety incident, a missed target—there’s often a familiar, knee-jerk reaction:
“Who’s responsible?”
But Root Cause Analysis (RCA) challenges that impulse. It asks us to go deeper—not to assign blame, but to understand what really happened and why. The goal isn’t retribution. The goal is prevention.
A Systematic Approach to Understanding Problems
Root Cause Analysis is a structured, evidence-based method for identifying the underlying causes of events—not just their symptoms. At its heart, RCA is about understanding organizational and programmatic drivers, not about pointing fingers.
Unlike informal debriefs or disciplinary reviews that focus on who made a mistake, RCA investigates the systems, processes, tools, and culture that allowed the failure to occur.
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It also helps to "Flip the Script". Ask yourself what is your definition of exactly what is "Corrective Action"? Are you correcting an Event or do you want to improve performance that has not yet resulted in an Event? Are you correcting AFTER the fact or trying to PREVENT an adverse consequence? After you have thought about what barriers failed that should have protected you from an Event, ask what barriers were in the way of achieving the outcome you desired? The two questions have opposite polarity. Don't just focus on Barriers to Failure but also Barriers to Success. Barriers can cut both ways; they can either prevent you from being successful (hampered your Performance) or FAIL to protect you from an adverse consequence.