What an incident report is for

Two different readers use the same document. The first is whoever has to act today: a supervisor deciding whether to stop work, a manager arranging cover for someone who went to hospital. The second reads it months later — an insurer, a regulator, or a solicitor — and they are reading it to find out what was known at the time.

That second reader is why the wording matters. An incident report records what was seen and heard, in the order it happened. Conclusions about blame belong in the investigation that follows, not in the first account of the event.

Write it the same day

Memory for sequence decays fastest. Within a day, people reliably remember what happened but start to disagree about the order, and once two accounts conflict the report stops being useful as evidence.

If you cannot finish it immediately, capture the facts that decay — times, positions, who was present, what was said — and come back for the rest. This form saves as you type, so a half-finished report survives a closed tab.

What to include, and what to leave out

A report that a stranger can act on without ringing you contains:

• The date, the time and the precise location — which bay, which machine, which stretch of road.
• A factual account in sequence, with no interpretation of cause.
• Everyone involved, including witnesses and whoever gave first aid, with a way to contact them.
• What was damaged, and whether it is still in service.
• What was done immediately, and what is keeping people safe until it is fixed.
• Photographs — a wide shot for context, then the detail.

Near misses are worth the same form

A near miss and a serious injury often differ only in luck. The same unguarded blind spot produces both, so the organisations that reduce injuries are usually the ones recording near misses in the same detail.

Answer the urgency and type questions honestly and the severity index at the top of this form will tell whoever reads it next what to look at first.

Reportable incidents

Some incidents must be reported to a regulator within a fixed period — in Great Britain under RIDDOR, in the United States under OSHA's recording and reporting rules. Thresholds differ by jurisdiction and by industry, and the duty usually sits with the employer rather than the person who filled in the form.

This template records whether an external report was made, to whom, and when. It does not decide whether one is required — check your own regulator's current guidance, because the thresholds change.

How to write the account itself

The account is the part of the report people find hardest, because they try to explain rather than describe. The fix is mechanical: write what a camera would have recorded, in the order it recorded it, then stop.

Two habits make a report hold up. Attribute anything you did not see yourself — "the operator said the pallet shifted" rather than "the pallet shifted". And separate observation from inference: "the guard was on the floor beside the machine" is an observation, "the guard had been removed" is an inference, and only the first belongs here.

Times matter more than people expect. A report that says "around lunchtime" cannot be matched against a shift record, a CCTV file or a delivery log months later. If you do not know the exact time, write the nearest fixed point you do know — "approximately ten minutes after the 14:00 shift change".

• Write in the past tense, in sequence, one event per sentence.
• Name the machine, bay, vehicle or stretch of road, not "the area".
• Quote what was said in quotation marks, and say who said it.
• Record what you did not see as well as what you did — gaps are evidence too.
• Leave blame out entirely. It is not withheld, it is simply a different document.

Photographs that are worth taking

Most incident photographs are useless six months later, because they are close-ups with nothing around them. A picture of a damaged pallet tells a stranger nothing about where it was or what else was nearby.

Shoot in three passes. A wide shot that shows the location and its surroundings, so someone who has never been there understands the space. A medium shot showing the relationship between things — the vehicle and the racking, the spill and the drain. Then the detail. Take the wide shot first, because the scene changes the moment anyone starts clearing up.

Photograph what is undamaged too, where it matters. A picture showing the guard was in place on the adjacent machine is worth as much as the one showing it was missing on this one.

What happens after the form is filed

A report that goes into a folder and stops has cost you the time it took to write. The reports that change anything are the ones with an owner and a date attached to each action, checked afterwards to see whether the action actually happened.

The immediate actions section is for what is keeping people safe right now — the barrier, the isolation, the shift arrangement — and those are usually temporary by design. Writing down that they are temporary is what stops a cable tie becoming the permanent fix.

If the incident triggers an investigation, this report is its starting point rather than its conclusion. Keep the original as filed, including anything it got wrong: an account corrected later is far more credible than one that was quietly edited.

Common questions