Lessons on Incident Investigations, Presented by Steven Cutchen

The U.S. Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board (CSB) is an independent, non-regulatory federal agency that investigates the root causes of major chemical incidents in order to protect people and the environment. At next week's meeting of AIChE's Virtual Local Section (VLS), chemical engineer Steven Cutchen, a former CSB employee, will describe the investigation process based on his past incident investigations involvements, and discuss techniques that can be applied in internal company investigations. Steven Cutchen is not speaking on behalf of CSB, or AIChE.

Steven Cutchen joined the US Chemical Safety Board in 2011 and worked as an investigator for the agency for eight years. Prior to that, he had over thirty-three years of experience in the chemical industry in process, process safety and process control engineering. Over the last ten years, he specialized in incident investigation, risk analysis and safety instrumented systems, serving as one of two instructors for globally implementing advanced incident investigation techniques specializing in the causes for human error. In addition to technical roles, he held various management positions ranging from technical supervision to world-wide technology management. Mr. Cutchen received a Bachelor of Science in Chemical Engineering from the University of Texas at Austin. He completed graduate work in statistics at The University of Houston-Clear Lake. He is a Certified Human Factors Analysis and Classification System Professional.