Corrective Action Program Best Practice 17 – Corrective Action Review Board

Significant event mitigation and recurrence prevention represent two important corrective action program functions. As such, senior management involvement with, commitment to, and accountability for significant event corrective actions is critical to program success.[wcm_restrict plans=”48935, 25542, 25653″]

Corrective Action Review Boards (CARBs) engage senior organization leaders in the response to significant events. As board participants, they review all root cause reports, challenging the thoroughness of investigation, ensuring the completeness, adequacy, and timeliness of corrective actions; verifying appropriateness of follow-up action assignments; and confirming the availability of needed resources. Additionally, the CARB establishes monitoring activities and performance measures to verify the effectiveness of the immediate response and corrective actions to prevent event recurrence.

CARB Membership

Root cause reports brought before the CARB address the organization’s most significant and typically most complex issues. Consequently, immediate and long-term corrective actions tend to involve broad functional and cross-functional areas. For this reason, CARB membership should include individuals representing each of the organization’s major disciplines.

The CARB’s responsibility to resource corrective actions necessitates management participation at a high enough level that such resources can be committed. In most organizations, these levels are represented as department managers and above.

A CARB chairperson, commonly one management level higher than the members, leads the board. This person is an individual to whom many, in not all, members report.

CARB Meeting Frequency

The CARB should meet at a frequency commensurate with the number of root cause evaluations (RCEs) processed by the organization. At a minimum, CARBs meet monthly to review the effectiveness of long-term corrective actions to prevent recurrence (CAPRs) of significant events. Some CARBs will meet as often as weekly to address poor organizational performance. Others meet in special sessions to address specific event occurrences and root cause evaluation completion if needed outside of the normal monthly meeting.

Common CARB Meeting Agenda

The following topics are commonly covered during the normal monthly CARB meeting:

1. Roll Call – CARB Chairperson
2. Safety Message – Designated Member
3. Presentation of New Root Cause Evaluations – Root Cause Evaluation Team Leader
4. Review of Open Corrective Actions to Prevent Recurrence – Responsible CARB Member
5. Review of Meeting Identified Follow-up Actions, Owners, and Due Dates – CARB Chairperson
6. Other Business – CARB Chairperson
7. Next Meeting Date Determined – CARB Chairperson
8. Meeting Close – CARB Chairperson

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About the Author

Nathan Ives is a StrategyDriven Principal and Host of the StrategyDriven Podcast. For over twenty years, he has served as trusted advisor to executives and managers at dozens of Fortune 500 and smaller companies in the areas of management effectiveness, organizational development, and process improvement. To read Nathan’s complete biography, click here.