Incident and Hazard Reporting

Investigate and action in ERMS

• Definition of Incident and Hazard

  Incident

  An unplanned event (including dangerous occurrences and systems failures) resulting in, or having a potential for injury, ill health, damage or other loss.

  Note: This incident report is only relevant if it is associated to an individual. If an individual cannot be associated with an incident then the Hazard Reporting System should be used.

  Hazard

  A source or a situation (including dangerous occurrences and systems failures) with a potential for harm in terms of human injury or ill health, damage to property, damage to the environment, or a combination of these.

  Note: This hazard report is only relevant if it is NOT associated to an individual. When a situation results in an injury/illness/disease or can be associated with an individual(s), including a near miss, the Incident Reporting System should be used.

• Incident reporting risk matrix and definitions

  The Risk Matrix uses Likelihood and Consequence to rate risk. This risk rating assists the incident approver to determine and prioritise the corrective actions.

  The incident reporting risk matrix page offers further details.

• Respond

  This advice presumes you are a supervisor or manager, and the incident involves staff who report directly to you, and occurs in a workplace location that you are responsible for. If not all these conditions are true, then another supervisor/manager may need to complete some of these actions.

  If you are not the most appropriate person to action a report assigned to you, please refer to the ERMS - Reassign Responsible Person for an incident/hazard report instructions available in ServiceNow.

  For supervisors: I have received an email notification from ERMS - what should I do?

  • Once you receive an ERMS email notification regarding the incident, log in to ERMS (or click the button below) and enter information about your immediate response, risk rating, action plan and the results of any incident investigation. For assistance see ERMS - Create an Action Plan for an incident/hazard report.
  Respond to an incident or hazard in ERMS
  • If you assess the risk rating of an incident, near miss, illness or injury to be high or severe (refer: Incident reporting risk matrix), you must ensure that an ICAM incident investigation is carried out with assistance from ICAM trained personnel. The Business Partner Contacts lists all ICAM investigators by Business Unit. Incidents assessed with a risk rating of medium, will require a basic or an ICAM incident investigation.
  • If there is an outstanding action plan or tasks at the time that you acknowledge the incident, you will need to return to ERMS again after the actions/tasks are completed, to confirm or adjust the information you entered previously.
  • You can also Request Campus Management take action in response to an incident/hazard report.

  If you have planned leave, your ERMS responsibilities need to be delegated  to an appropriate person during your absence. For instructions on how to delegate responsibilities, see ERMS - Delegate incident/hazard responsibilities to another while on leave. Remember to remove the delegation when you return, as ongoing delegation of responsibilities can cause issues with system access.

• Notifiable Incidents

  If the incident is notifiable then respond immediately by following the steps in the Health & Safety - Notify an incident to WorkSafe process.

  If you are unsure what a notifiable incident is (often referred to as a high consequence incident at the University) please refer to:

  • the Health & Safety - Notify an incident to WorkSafe process introduction
  • Health & Safety: Incident, injury, hazard reporting and investigation requirements under section 4.4
  • Safety Bulletin 19/09: High consequence and notifiable incidents
• Manage / Investigate

  Incident investigation

  An incident with a risk rating of Medium requires the responsible person to complete a basic investigation. It may require further investigation with an incident investigation team.

  An incident with a risk rating of High or Extreme requires an incident investigation team, including one ICAM trained member. (refer: Incident reporting risk matrix).

  Instructions on completing incident investigations are available from Health & Safety: Incident, injury, hazard reporting and investigation requirements.

  Enter incident investigation results into ERMS. If you do not have access to ERMS you can use the hardcopy Incident investigation form which can then be transferred to ERMS.

  Corrective action plan

  All hazards and incidents are required to have an Action Plan. The action plan is used to assess the hazard or incident. Based on this assessment control measures are introduced to mitigate or minimise:

  • the hazard from becoming an incident; or
  • the incident reoccurring.