In an ever faster changing world, innovation is a crucial tool to maintain the quality of road networks. In order to safely use innovative materials and techniques, validation procedures are needed. Because of the variable and non-standard nature of innovations, it is hard to standardize this kind of validation. Also, ensuring that innovations address the needs of road authorities can be quite a challenge. The Dutch highway authority, Rijkswaterstaat, currently uses a three tier approach to the validation of innovations. These consists of solicited innovations to address specific agency challenges and two systems to address unsolicited innovations. This paper describes the need for innovations, the most urgent topics that require solutions in the Dutch situation, the current approach towards innovation validation including examples of all three types of validation and the further developments foreseen for that system.@en

This manual describes a method that is based on ¿Events and Causal Factors Analysis¿, ECFA (Buys and Clark, 1995) and attempts to distil refinements of approach that have been collected over the last decade. These refinements were arrived at through the experiences of the authors and by applying criteria and methods published by others (see the bibliography). In order to distinguish this method from its predecessor, it is called ECFA+, Events and Conditional Factors Analysis.@en

This manual is intended for line managers and supervisors as well as specialists. It describes a method that is based on ECFA - Events and Causal Factors Analysis (Buys and Clark, 1995) and includes many refinements of approach. In order to distinguish this method from its predecessor, it is called ECFA+, Events and Conditional Factors Analysis. The paper "Investigation tools in context" describes where ECFA+ fits in to the "investigator's toolbox". The draft ECFA+ Manual is available for download. We have developed this manual to: - help investigators produce accounts of incidents that are robust with regard to evidence and completeness; - encourage stakeholders to share information about incidents; - provide a reference point for practitioners, tool developers, researchers and students. [http://www.nri.eu.com/ECFA_Page.htm]@en