Assessing the nature of the incident
Any action that needs to be taken will depend on the nature of the incident.
As a first step, gathering and assessing incident-related information will enable you to analyse the situation and establish goals. All relevant information should be passed to the incident management (IM) team (and others, as appropriate) for it to be dealt with in accordance with agreed procedures (see Putting the Response Plan into action). This may also involve cooperating with external investigators, including the police (see Working with the emergency services) and/or external advisers, such as lawyers.
The impact of some incidents will be immediate. For example:
- serious health and safety incidents involving employees and/or members of the public, such as accidents involving passenger vehicles or fires causing major damage and/or injuries (see Does the incident involve injuries and fatalities?)
- environmental incidents involving major pollution, such as oil spills or releases into the atmosphere (possibly associated with implications for human health) (see Does the incident have environmental implications?)
- protester action incidents on or near business premises (see Does the incident involve protester action?)
- any incident preventing usage of premises or on-site information technology infrastructure
The full implications of some incidents may, on the other hand, take time to become apparent. For example:
- incidents involving apparently minor injuries to individuals, which may develop into more complicated conditions over time (particularly common with head injuries)
- exposure to hazardous substances (such as asbestos), which may cause illness in the future
- environmental incidents, which may result in gradual pollution over a long period of time (such as leakage of contaminants into groundwater)
