The duties of an incident commander
- Incident preparation. Incident commanders are responsible for setting up communication channels, inviting the...
- Decision-making. ICs are responsible for quickly assessing an incident and making decisions about what to do, which team...
- Delegation. ICs must delegate tasks to their teams and know when to expand the team by pulling in...
- Incident preparation. ...
- Decision-making. ...
- Delegation. ...
- Oversight. ...
- Team alignment. ...
- Panic management. ...
- Escalation and resource management. ...
- Planning.
What are the responsibilities of an incident commander?
Typically, requirements for incident commanders include:
- Strong communication skills
- A high-level knowledge of incident management best practices and systems
- Problem-solving skills
- The ability to make quick, confident decisions
- Listening and synthesis skills
- Previous experience with major incidents (either as a participant or an observer)
- Leadership skills—the ability to take command in a high-stress situation
What is the incident commander's responsibility?
The duties of an incident commander Incident preparation. Incident commanders are responsible for setting up communication channels, inviting the appropriate people into those channels during an incident, and training team members on best practices for not ... Decision-making. ... Delegation. ... Oversight. ... Team alignment. ... Panic management. ... Escalation and resource management. ... Planning. ... Post-mortems. ...
What does incident commander do?
The incident commander sets priorities and defines the organization of the incident response teams and the overall incident action plan. The role of incident commander may be assumed by senior or higher qualified officers upon their arrival or as the situation dictates.
What are two priorities established by the incident commander?
the Incident Commander to act on behalf of the Secretary, State Emergency Board and others who have responsibilities for the incident. They also allow the Incident Commander to make decisions and allocate funds. • Begin establishing incident facilities. The next priority is to establish the incident facilities, beginning with the Incident Command Post.
Which is a duty of the initial incident commander?
One of the most important functions of the Initial Incident Commander is to determine resource needs and promptly initiate the appropriate requests for additional personnel, apparatus, material, equipment, and other assistance as required.
What is the role of the incident commander quizlet?
The Incident Commander is the person with the overall responsibility and authority for the management of a second or multiple alarm incident. The fire commander is the person with the overall responsibility to manage dispatched resources at an emergency event.
What is the role of an incident commander at the scene of an MCI?
Organizationally, an incident commander is responsible for the overall management of the incident. Under the incident commander falls several roles, including operations, planning, logistics, and finance. The operations role oversees the medical branch of an incident.22-Sept-2021
Who designates the Incident Commander and the process for transferring?
The jurisdiction or organization with primary responsibility for the incident designates the Incident Commander and the process for transferring command. Transfer of command may occur during the course of an incident.
Who has overall responsibility for managing the on scene incident?
Who has overall responsibility for managing the on-scene incident? Incident commander.
Who does the Incident Commander report to?
General Staff: The group of incident management personnel reporting to the Incident Commander. They may have one or more Deputies, as needed. The General Staff consists of the Operations Section Chief, Planning Section Chief, Logistics Section Chief, and Finance/Administration Section Chief.
Who is the on scene commander?
1. An individual in the immediate vicinity of an isolating event who temporarily assumes command of the incident. 2.
Who is typically Incident Commander?
The lead person on site in charge of an agency's operations would be the agency's incident commander. Together, the incident commanders would make decisions. If no other level of government was involved, then the mayor, for example, might appoint one overall incident commander.
What is IC constant?
A constant in the incident command system is the need to identify an incident commander (IC) at all alarms. There must be one single, central and well-supported IC during an incident in order for the system to operate properly.
What are the priorities of an incident commander?
The incident commander must be able to assess the incident priorities to determine the strategy and tactics that will be used. The incident priorities are simple and straightforward: Life safety. Incident stabilization.
What are the three incidents priorities?
The incident priorities are simple and straightforward: Life safety. Incident stabilization. Property conservation. These three priorities are in rank order and must always be addressed in that fashion. These three priorities must be considered at all types of incidents.
What is the IC's main objective?
The IC, however, has another major objective: ensuring that all members operating at an incident are safe from avoidable harm. The list of the IC’s duties and responsibilities are most worthy of discussion.
What is an effective IC?
The effective IC is a good delegator of authority and resources to be able to reach goals and objects. The incident commander must be continually assessing outcomes to determine the effectiveness of the incident action plan.
What is the IC in firefighting?
The IC must be the chief safety advocate for the firefighting forces. Next, the IC must utilize the three incident priorities to determine the strategic goals and tactical objectives. These items (incident priorities, goals and objectives) coupled with resource needs make up the action plan.
Why do departments wet down dumpsters?
If there are additional dumpsters close by , most departments will wet them down to prevent additional responses to the same area. The steps taken to handle the situation were based on the incident priorities, strategic goals, tactical objectives and available resources. That is the action plan in simple terms.
Why should an IC run a blameless postmortem?
Once an incident is resolved, the IC should run a blameless postmortem to identify how the team can improve incident management and overall systems in the future. The best ICs not only guide incidents calmly toward resolution. They also work to help the company learn from the incident and make improvements.
What is an incident commander?
An incident commander—also known as an incident manager—is a member of the IT or DevOps team who is responsible for managing incident response. This person’s priority is to guide an incident to its resolution as quickly and completely as possible, managing the resources, plan, and communication involved in that resolution.
Why is the incident commander important?
Which is why part of the incident commander’s job is to keep teams calm and focused.
What are the responsibilities of an incident commander?
The core responsibilities of an incident commander are resource management, communication, and problem-solving. Anyone with these skills—from senior leadership all the way down to interns—can make a great incident commander.
Why is it important to have a strategic plan for incidents?
It’s also essential to have a strategic plan for incidents before they happen. The more well documented your process is pre-incident, the easier it will be for the IC and teams to follow in the more intense , higher stress environment an incident creates.
What are problem solving skills?
Problem-solving skills. The ability to make quick, confident decisions. Listening and synthesis skills. Previous experience with major incidents (either as a participant or an observer) Leadership skills—the ability to take command in a high-stress situation.
Who is responsible for post mortem?
Post-mortems. Once an incident has been resolved, the incident commander is responsible for the post-mortem process, including creating documents where teams can share their thoughts, planning post-mortem meetings, and making recommendations on how to prevent or lessen the impact of future incidents.
How to be a positive influencer?
Provide a positive influence. Emphasize and monitor teamwork. Lead with communicated intent. Establish and communicate objectives, priorities, work assignments, and performance expectations. Identify, analyze, and use relevant situational information to make informed decisions and take appropriate actions.
What is the IAP in medical emergency management?
Manage the medical emergency based on procedures stated in the Incident Action Plan (IAP), Medical Incident Report, or other relevant guidelines. Monitor for signs and symptoms of fatigue, illness, or injury. Mitigate appropriately.
What is an incident commander?
The Incident Commander Type 5 (ICT5) develops strategies and oversees the implementation of tactics, while providing for the safety of the public and all personnel assigned to the incident. The ICT5 reports to an Agency Administrator (AA), Duty Officer, Fire Management Officer, or other designated supervisor and works in the Command functional area.
How to be a good IC?
Looking at the four domains, we see the following qualities: 1 Self-Awareness. Being conscious of your feelings about the incident, and how other people feel about it, can help the IC be better in understanding what is going on in their environment, and not be clouded by judgement that may come from previous experiences. 2 Self-Control. Once aware of your feelings, you can make better decisions on how to react to them. For instance, the IC will recognize flight vs flight emotions, and choose to make the right choices about how to react to people during the incident, even in the face of pressure and loss. 3 Social Awareness. Being empathetic of people’s feelings will be a key asset for the IC especially in understanding impact of the incident on business services and processes. That means the IC will not play down the urgency that the business expects from technology and suppliers to restore services as quickly as possible. Similarly, the IC must be aware of the feelings of the technical teams including vendors who face the challenge of needing to quickly resolve the incident without buckling under pressure. 4 Relationship Management. The IC has to be inspiring enough to rally all the stakeholders in one direction. The IC must foster the right mindset in everyone involved to work together, manage any conflicts that come, and remember the big picture.
What is good practice in major incident management?
Good practice in major incident management is to separate the actual restoration activities from the management of the incident itself. (It can be quite disconcerting for the sysadmin to have the CEO behind them questioning the meaning of bash command.)
Why is positive communication important?
Positive communication is also an important attribute as the way the message of the incident handling is passed can play a big role in shaping the perception of stakeholders as to whether the IC is actually managing the situation in the best possible way. (Learn more about ways to communicate about incidents .)
What is the role of the IC in a major incident?
The IC is accountable for the activities involved in managing the major incident to complete resolution. These tasks include: Occupying the war room (or establishing the conference call) to manage interactions and escalations with relevant stakeholders involved in the incident.
What is incident manager?
A closer look reveals that the incident manager is responsible for the operational activities of the incident management practice and may not necessarily be the designated person for certain major incidents. At one of my previous employers, the IC was one of the heads of department.
Why is being empathetic important to the IC?
Being empathetic of people’s feelings will be a key asset for the IC especially in understanding impact of the incident on business services and processes. That means the IC will not play down the urgency that the business expects from technology and suppliers to restore services as quickly as possible.
What does the IC communicate with?
The IC must communicate with a wide range of technical and non-technical personnel to accomplish fast and accurate incident resolution. These same people must also respect and trust the IC’s plan of action and management.
What is the role of an incident manager?
Primary responsibility: The incident manager has the overall responsibility and authority during the incident. They coordinate and direct all facets of the incident response effort. As a rule of thumb, the incident manager is responsible for all roles and and responsibilities until they designate that role to someone else.
What is the primary responsibility of a technical responder?
Primary responsibility: A technical responder familiar with the system or service experiencing an incident. Often responsible for suggesting and implementing fixes. Secondary responsibilities: Providing context and updates to the incident team, paging additional subject matter experts.
What is the role of a scribe?
Role: Scribe. Primary responsibility: A scribe is responsible for recording key information about the incident and its response effort. Secondary responsibilities: Maintain an incident timeline, keep a record of key people and activities throughout the incident.
What is the role of a tech lead?
Primary responsibility: The tech lead is typically a senior technical responder. They are responsible for developing theories about what's broken and why, deciding on changes, and running the technical team during the incident. This role works closely with the incident manager.
Why is it bad to have important tasks ignored?
It’s also a terrible time to have important tasks ignored, all because everyone thought somebody else was working on it. Incidents are made worse when incident response team members can’t communicate, can’t cooperate, and don’t know what each other is working on. Work gets repeated, work gets ignored, customers and the business suffer.
What is the role of a communications manager?
Primary responsibility: The communications manager is the person familiar with public communications, possibly from the customer support or public relations teams. They are responsible for writing and sending internal and external communications about the incident.
Who is responsible for all roles and responsibilities until they designate that role to someone else?
As a rule of thumb, the incident manager is responsible for all roles and and responsibilities until they designate that role to someone else. At Atlassian, the incident manager can also devise and delegate ad hoc roles as required by the incident.
Roles
- An individual must be qualified to fill this most important position. Some firefighters compare the ICs role to that of a quarterback in a football game. The quarterback sets the strategy on how to win the game, then must call the plays (the tactics needed to reach the strategic goals) and assign the other players to tasks. These functions are similar to the list of duties and responsibil…
Mission
- The IC, however, has another major objective: ensuring that all members operating at an incident are safe from avoidable harm. The list of the ICs duties and responsibilities are most worthy of discussion. This column will review each of the primary functions that an effective IC must be prepared to handle while serving in this role.
Safety
- The first responsibility of the incident commander is to ensure the safety of the firefighters under his or her command. The top safety officer is the IC, who must have a clear understanding of how each decision implemented affects the safety of the operating forces. During the heat of battle and with various other pressures, this is all too easy t...
Quotes
- Further, the IC must possess a reasonable understanding of personal limitations. The best ICs that I have worked under have walked a mile in the firefighters moccasins. For instance, it is difficult to explain what it is like to work inside a fully encapsulated suit. Incident commanders should get first-hand experience, whenever possible, so as to realize what they are asking their …
Example
- To demonstrate, if the first incident priority of life safety has not been achieved at a serious automobile accident, the IC would develop an action plan to extricate and free the entrapped victim. The extrication function is the strategy, while the tactic would be the rescue company operating the hydraulic tool to remove the obstacles to complete the removal of the customer.
Analysis
- The difference between strategy and tactics is simple. The strategic goal is the what and the tactical objective is the how. An example of a strategic goal would be to contain the product in the hot zone at a hazardous materials scene, while the tactical objectives would be to overpack and remove the spilled chemical to reach this goal. Often it will take several tactical objectives to ac…
Purpose
- The incident priorities of life safety, incident stabilization and property conservation coupled with the selected strategic goals, tactical objectives and resource needs make up the incident action plan. Every incident that an IC handles must have an action plan. Its a lot like a playbook for the quarterback. lt keeps the IC focused and prevents him or her from missing the big picture.
Use
- Although the term action plan may be new to the reader, you and your department have been using one for handling calls. Lets take a common alarm to demonstrate, such as a dumpster fire. The action plan implemented would probably look like this: properly place the apparatus; ensure that the area is safe; advance a handline using the proper level of personal protective equipmen…
Management
- Next, the IC must develop a management structure to handle the incident properly. This structure must be based on the principles of span of control (a supervisor-to-subordinate ratio of five-to-one) and unity of command (each member has only one boss). Difficult and complex incidents will require a substantial management structure to be developed. An effective IC will build a man…
Operation
- The incident commander must be continually assessing outcomes to determine the effectiveness of the incident action plan. This function is accomplished through information received from the various operating sectors during the incident. They should be providing the IC with regular updated intelligence (the size-up process). The IC must adjust the plan accordingly to reach the …
Preparation
- Typically, ICs are reluctant to call for enough help early in the situation. Most cases that we handle are fast moving and require that we front load the effort if we are going to be successful. If you think that you may need another engine, you probably need two. Dont forget the requirement to staff a rapid intervention company (RIC) at all working incidents. Ensuring that there are at least …
Function
- The IC must be responsible for the release of information to the media. Emergency events are newsworthy and are publicly scrutinized. The IC needs to manage the media contacts or be at the medias mercy (generally not a pretty sight). This assignment is delegated to the public information officer (PIO). However, the IC should invest the time to review any and all informatio…
Aftermath
- The last of the incident commanders major responsibilities is to coordinate activities with outside agencies. During a significant incident, many agencies will show up to help and perform their assigned tasks. For example, two highly visited situations are mass casualty incidents and hazmat alarms.
Administration
- In any situation where outside agencies are deployed, the IC has to coordinate efforts to fit into the incident action plan. Once again, there is a specific position, the liaison officer, to handle this responsibility. The IC will need to be informed about the status and requests of outside agencies, However, in some situations where the support agencies may be to have higher access or specif…
What Is An Incident Commander?
Isn’T The Incident Manager The IC?
- Some texts use the term ‘incident manager’ as a synonym for the IC. A closer look reveals that the incident manager is responsible for the operational activities of the incident management practiceand may not necessarily be the designated person for certain major incidents. At one of my previous employers, the IC was one of the heads of department. This role was separate fro…
What Does An IC do?
- The IC’s work is to maintain oversight of the major incident procedure. The IC is accountable for the activities involved in managing the major incident to complete resolution. These tasks include: 1. Occupying the war room(or establishing the conference call) to manage interactions and escalations with relevant stakeholders involved in the incident. 2. Identifying and onboarding ke…
Qualities and Competencies of An IC
- One wouldn’t expect an IC to be a rookie in the organization. Given the psychological strain that accompanies the pressures of dealing with a major disruption, the kind of person who would command such as situation should have a level of experience that mirrors that of an army general! When designating an incident commander (or perhaps you’ve just been appointed one!)…
The IC Perspective
- The IC role is not one that should be taken lightly. It is important that anyone chosen to handle this responsibility must have a perspective that is not limited to technical aspects: the IC must be conscious about shepherding people in the right direction towards the common goal—quick resolution of the incident.
Additional Resources
- For more on incident management, explore the BMC Service Management Blogand these related articles: 1. Incident Management vs Problem Management 2. Why Incident Response Plans are Critical for IT 3. How To Map the Incident Management Process 4. How and Why to Run Incident Drills 5. Introduction to Critical Incident Response Time (CIRT): A Better Way to Measure Perfor…