Skip to content

Document {{ORG_PREFIX}}-019

Incident Reporting & Investigation Procedure

1. Purpose

This procedure keeps one promise: anything that hurt someone, nearly hurt someone, or damaged something gets reported without fear, responded to promptly, and investigated for causes rather than culprits — so it doesn't happen again. It implements the Quality & OH&S Policy's prevention commitment. Paired with the Nonconformity, Corrective Action & Improvement Procedure, it carries any event, incident or nonconformity, from first report to closed corrective action: the report and the investigation happen here, and every resulting action runs through the CAPA engine to closure.

Because this is a worker-facing OH&S document, it is consulted with workers via the {{ROLE_WORKER_REP}} before approval, evidenced in docs/records/consultation/.

2. Scope

All incidents arising from work performed under {{ORG_NAME}}'s control, at the office or in the field: injuries, near misses, ill health (including psychosocial harm), property damage, environmental releases during field work, and quality incidents with an immediate-event character. Hazards observed before anything happens follow the hazard pathway in the Risk, Opportunity & Hazard Methodology — same form, different branch. Emergencies in progress are handled first under the Emergency Preparedness & Response Plan; this procedure picks up once people are safe.

3. Procedure

3.1 Reporting and investigation process

Step Action Responsible role Output / record
1 Report — anyone, employee or contractor, reports any incident or near miss as soon as practicable via the Hazard & Incident Report form (or verbally to any of the five IMS roles, who submit the form). Reporting is explicitly no-blame: a near miss reported is the system working. Anyone Form submission
2 Triage — the {{ROLE_OHS_COORDINATOR}} reviews every submission the same business day where practicable: hazard (no event) → hazard pathway; incident or near miss → an Incident Register row with type, severity, people involved, and whether investigation is required. {{ROLE_OHS_COORDINATOR}} Incident Register row
3 Notify where required — see §3.2. {{ROLE_OHS_COORDINATOR}} Notification noted on the row
4 Investigate per §3.3, at a depth proportionate to actual and potential severity. Investigating role Investigation record
5 Act and close — corrective actions run through the CAPA engine; the row closes only when its actions are done and communicated (§3.4). {{ROLE_OHS_COORDINATOR}} Linked CAPA rows; row Status

3.2 Immediate response and correction

People first, paperwork later. Whoever is on the spot acts immediately: make the situation safe, give first aid, and shut down the path to a repeat (stop the task, isolate the equipment, withdraw from the site). Where the incident may be notifiable, preserve the scene as required until the regulator advises otherwise.

Regulator notification: [ORG-DECISION: the jurisdiction's notifiable incident categories, notification timeframes, and scene-preservation duties — taken from the Compliance Obligations register at instantiation, never invented]. The {{ROLE_OHS_COORDINATOR}} notifies, records the notification on the Incident Register row (Regulator Notified), and informs {{ROLE_TOP_MANAGEMENT}} immediately for any notifiable event.

3.3 Investigation and root cause

Every investigation runs with the right people in the room: the {{ROLE_WORKER_REP}} and the crew who were there take part in every case, and a client site representative or subcontractor supervisor joins where the work crossed onto their ground. Between them they can say what actually happened and what would stop it happening again, which is more than any desk review produces.

  1. Start at the scene. Establish what happened, in what sequence, under what conditions, with which people and equipment, from the people involved, the scene itself, and the records, never from assumption.
  2. Dig for why. Root causes live in task design, controls, competence, communication, workload, and environment, so the question is what let this happen, never who slipped; the method scales with severity [ORG-DECISION: e.g. 5-why for low severity, structured causal analysis for high/notifiable].
  3. Widen the lens with two register checks. Search the Incident and Hazard registers for the pattern: has this happened here before, and where else could it? Then review the relevant risk assessments per the Risk, Opportunity & Hazard Methodology, because an incident is evidence the inherent/residual assessment or its controls were wrong somewhere, and update the rows to match what the event proved.
  4. Fix through the CAPA engine. Everything the investigation decides to fix goes to the CAPA engine (Nonconformity, Corrective Action & Improvement Procedure): actions are chosen per the hierarchy of controls, land via the Management of Change Procedure where they change how work is done, and pass an effectiveness check before closure.

Investigation timeliness: started within [ORG-DECISION: e.g. 2 working days] for any injury or high-potential near miss.

3.4 Records and communication of outcomes

  • Records: every Incident Register row (the index) pairs with an investigation record at docs/records/incidents/YYYY-MM-<slug>.md that tells the whole story: the event, findings, causes, the actions that followed, and the linked CAPA rows. Nothing about an incident lives only in memory. Person names are appropriate inside records; they are point-in-time facts.
  • Communication of outcomes: findings and actions go back to the workers involved, the {{ROLE_WORKER_REP}}, and anyone else the event touched, such as client site representatives or contractors. Lessons with wider application go to everyone through toolbox talks and the awareness loop in the Competence, Training & Awareness Procedure. The {{ROLE_WORKER_REP}} works from the same records the investigators do, reachable through the communication arrangements, so nobody has to ask permission to check what was found.

4. Records and Registers

Activity Register (index) Record (evidence)
Every incident and near miss Incident Register docs/records/incidents/YYYY-MM-<slug>.md
Hazards surfaced by reports Hazard Register Assessed per the methodology
Corrective actions Nonconformity & CAPA Register Per the CAPA engine's records

Honest status: docs/records/incidents/ is empty until something has actually been reported and investigated. Empty is correct — and a long-empty folder alongside a busy hazard register is the healthy pattern.

5. Exceptions

None for reporting, immediate response, regulator notification, or worker participation in investigations. Investigation depth and timeframe may be adjusted for low-severity events at the {{ROLE_OHS_COORDINATOR}}'s documented discretion.

  • quality-ohs-policy — the prevention commitment this implements.
  • nonconformity-corrective-action-improvement-procedure — the corrective action engine investigations feed.
  • risk-opportunity-hazard-methodology — the hazard pathway and the risk reassessment step.
  • emergency-preparedness-response-plan — response while an event is live.
  • communication-consultation-participation-procedure — the consultation and communication mechanisms used throughout.

7. Revision History

Version Date Author Description of Changes Reviewed By Review Date Approved By Approval Date
0.1 2026-07-16 {{ROLE_OHS_COORDINATOR}} Initial draft — — — —

8. Document Control

Document{{ORG_PREFIX}}-019
TypeProcedure
Version0.1
StatusDraft
Owner{{ROLE_OHS_COORDINATOR}}
Reviewer{{ROLE_WORKER_REP}}
Approver{{ROLE_TOP_MANAGEMENT}}
Next Review2026-08-15
ClassificationInternal

Held in the document frontmatter, mirrored to the Document Register.