Incident investigation team composition

Based on their incident evaluation, management will put together the formal incident investigation team (which will usually have a similar composition to that of the Go Team) as illustrated in Figure 11.3. 

Personnel with proper training, skills, and experience are critical to the successful outcome of an incident investigation. This chapter describes team composition as a function of incident type, complexity, and severity as well as suggested training topics. It also provides team leaders with a high-level overview of the basic team activities typically required in the course of conducting an investigation. 

The system must describe specific mechanisms for deciding to activate an investigation team and the team composition for each incident category. There should also be a mechanism that describes required internal... 

From many companies perspectives, classification by severity is the most common classification system used to establish when to investigate an incident and who should be on a team. The main disadvantage with using severity alone to establish team membership is that it does not consider the potential loss from the occurrence, such as that with a high potential incident. In addition, the complexity of the system involved should also be used to determine team composition as more complex systems might require a larger team to understand the data. 

The incident investigation management system may include a description of how a team is organized and how it functions. The team organization, composition, and functions must be structured to provide flexibility based on the particular incident and the management system should emphasize that fact. The system may describe an investigation team s basic objectives... 

The team leader s responsibilities need to be explicit. Normally a team leader chosen for more serious or more complex incident investigations will be independent from the operation or facility where the incident occurred. Actual team composition may vary significantly based on the nature of the process and the degree of technical sophistication. This flexibility of team composition is an important feature of a well-designed incident investigation management system. 

The composition and mandate of a team will vary depending on the specific incident. Within a large organization or a company with several very different processes, it may not be practical or desirable to preselect one team to investigate all incidents. Personnel should be selected to participate in investigations based on tbeir specific skills, experience, availability, and tbe team roles tbat need to be filled for a particular investigation. Over time, tbis approach will produce a pool of trained and experienced employees familiar with the investigation process. 

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