Near Miss
An incident that could have caused injury, illness, or property damage but didn't, treated in a strong safety program as an early-warning signal worth investigating, not a "no harm, no foul" event to shrug off.
Why it matters
A near miss and an actual injury are often separated only by luck or timing, not by any meaningful difference in the underlying hazard. Investigating near misses catches the same root causes an injury investigation would, without anyone having to get hurt first.
On a real project
A dropped tool from an upper floor lands in a cleared area with no one below at the time. A safety manager treats it as a near miss worth investigating rather than a non-event, and traces it to a missing toe board that a fall-protection inspection should have caught.
Who this matters most to
A Safety Manager investigates reported near misses the same way they would an actual injury, looking for the root cause before it produces a real one. A Superintendent is often the first to hear about a near miss in the field and decides whether it gets reported up or dismissed as nothing.
Where this goes wrong
A crew doesn't report a near miss because nothing actually happened, treating it as not worth the paperwork. The underlying hazard that caused it goes uncorrected, and the same condition later causes an actual injury that a reported near miss would likely have prevented.