Dr David K Ramsay PHD, MBA, BA, SDDT, MCIM, MCMI

In 1986 I founded what became Kelvin TOP-SET™ Incident Investigation Methodology. This is now well established and is taught in over forty countries. We have led or facilitated serious investigations including those with multiple fatalities in many industrial sectors including oil & gas, rail, shipping, space, explosives and civil engineering. While I personally developed the basic model, which has remained remarkably robust over the many years since its inception, my wife, Lorna, was the key in developing the teaching of the methodology and in particular, refining Root Cause Analysis (RCA). The success of the company and the methodology has been achieved by teamwork involving all of our specialists and office support staff over many years.

In early 2024, Lorna and I sold 80% of the operating company, Kelvin TOP-SET Ltd, into an Employee Buyout Trust (EBT) so that the permanent staff could benefit by becoming partners in our highly successful business. However, Loma and I do retain a significant shareholding and all copyright. We remain as directors and have regular meetings with the partners.

At the heart of TOP-SET is my belief that there is no such thing as an accident; it is 'a systems failure’. This usually occurs when there has been an undetected change, or perhaps an initial design or planning failure. This means that the system is not working as intended. I call these hidden changes ‘Organisational Rust’.

TOP-SET teaches how to investigate. Surprisingly this is not as common as one might expect. Many methodologies, while describing themselves as investigation methodologies are in fact analysis methodologies. The analysis, to be successful, always requires accurate input from the investigation i.e. first finding all the causal factors. This is what TOP-SET does this.

I have deliberately kept the website simple and straightforward and intend to publish key components of investigation which I hope will be helpful. I have presented these as videos and papers

For further information about the TOP-SET methodology and our semis, please go to www.kelvintopset.com.