Critical incident management
Definition, when and how does UMIMS activate, training opportunities for staff
The University of Melbourne Incident Management System (UMIMS)
Critical Incident Management is one of the University’s key risk management strategies.
It is a systematised approach that includes policies, standards and procedures for ensuring that people safety is paramount. It aims to ensure critical business activities can be maintained or recovered in a timely fashion in the event of a disruption. Its purpose is to minimise the human, operational, financial, legal, regulatory, reputational and other material consequences arising from an incident.
Definition of a critical incident
A critical incident is an event that may adversely affect the University and requires an immediate response. It is likely to cause significant personal illness or injury, substantial impact to operations and commercial prospects, a degradation of reputation, or lead to an impact on the wider community.
When and how does UMIMS become activated?
UMIMS is deployed in the event of a critical incident, when standard emergency responses are not able to normalise the situation (eg. ringing the Fire Brigade, Ambulance, etc.). Where likely impacts are beyond the Business As Usual procedures of Faculties/Schools, remote campuses or department staff can obtain additional University support and resources by calling Security x46666 and request to speak to the Duty Officer.
The Health & Safety - Initiate critical incident response process outlines the escalation procedure that initiates a critical incident.
Training and new skill opportunities for staff
There is approximately 100 trained staff that can respond to a critical incident as part of an Incident Management Team. There is specialist training in specific roles and bi-annual scenario based training exercises.
If you are interested in participating in this program, please contact the Emergency & Business Resilience Team.