URS Report - Incident Management Study

2. Methodology

2.1 Initial Review

The initial tasks identified in Figure 1 involved the gathering of data and information in order to provide the study team with a greater understanding of current practices in the UK and elsewhere.

In fact very little literature was available to describe UK experiences other than descriptions of the HA and maintenance agency initiatives including 'Minuteman' and 'Rapid Reaction' teams in specific areas. A lot of literature was available from the US where incident management is far more formalised in terms of roles, responsibilities and management. Reference will be made later to this.

In addition to the literature reviews, meetings were held with a number of representatives from the key organisations involved in incident management. These included:

• Bedfordshire and Hertfordshire Ambulance and Paramedic Service, 6 November 2001,
• Bedfordshire Fire and Rescue Service, 8 November 2001,
• Bedfordshire Police Service, 25 October 2001,
• Central Motorway Police Group, 14 November 2001,
• Area 8 Managing Agents, 24 October 2001.

Group interview sessions were also held with members of Hertfordshire Constabulary on 16 November 2001, with follow-up sessions going out on patrol with the police to incidents on 30 November 2001 and 18 December 2001.

2.2 Workshops

Information gathered at the earlier stages helped to provide a firm basis upon which to plan the workshop sessions. These were the primary source of data collection and were designed to:

• establish the roles and responsibilities of organisations involved in clearing incidents,
• identify the sorts of problems that can complicate incident clearance and how these problems are overcome,
• identify any improvements in communication, working practice and infrastructure that could be made to reduce incident clearance time.

It was originally envisaged that workshops would be carried out at the following locations:

• M25 Orbital Area
• Central Motorway Police Group - CMPG (West Midlands, West Mercia, Staffordshire and Warwickshire)
• Cheshire
• North Yorkshire A1/M1.

However, in parallel to the work being undertaken for this study, a similar workshop was being organised by the HA encompassing the M25 Sphere in December 2001. The need for this was triggered by a significant chemical spillage incident on the M25 resulting in substantial delays and so the workshop was focused upon improving incident communication procedures specifically within the M25 region.

To avoid duplication, workshops for this study were held in the other three locations. It also became apparent from these that sufficient information had been obtained to achieve the study objectives. The M25 Sphere workshop also focused more on the maintenance agency aspects of incident clearance, which provided a good balance with the three other workshops, which were strongly represented by members of the emergency services. The results from the M25 Sphere workshop were provided by the organisers and are included in this report where relevant. The remaining three workshops were held on:

• 30th November 2001 Central Motorway Police Group
• 19th December 2001 North Yorkshire A1/M1
• 10th January 2002 Cheshire.

Attendees at the three workshops were drawn from the following organisations:

• The police including control room operators
• Highways Agency area managers
• Maintenance contractors
• Local highway authorities
• Recovery and breakdown operators
• Fire and rescue and ambulance services
• Chemical spillage and waste clean-up operators.

2.3 Design of Workshops

The workshop delegates were organised into a number of groups consisting of a range of different organisation representatives. For the final workshop in Cheshire, for the afternoon session the groups were selected to be homogeneous in terms of organisation representatives. Central to the workshops were discussions around example major incidents or vignettes. These were as follows:

• Incident with vehicle fire on rural dual carriageway
• Major incident affecting motorway and local authority road
• Spillage of hazardous chemicals on semi-urban dual carriageway
• Incident with vehicle fire on rural motorway.

The incidents were shown on AO sized computer generated graphic displays along with associated assumptions regarding, for example, the number and types of casualties, road type environment, the nearest junction for access, proximity of houses, wind direction, other distractions e.g. animals. The incident descriptions are set out in Appendix A.

The vignettes provided a central theme to the workshops around which roles and responsibilities could be discussed, key tasks identified and problems and solutions examined. A simplified schedule of activities for each workshop is provided below. Further detail can be found in the workshop reports that provide timelines for each group and other information on key tasks, problems and solutions.

• Workshop participants split into groups, each pre-selected to provide a range of representation of the different organisations involved.
• Introductions and summary of each person's role within the groups. Discussion of the vignette and any alternative approaches that could be taken to clear the vignette. Discussion of each person's role in the clearance of the example incident.
• Writing down on post-it notes all the tasks each person's organisation would need to carry out to aid clearance from the moment that the call was received to the point at which the person's organisation would permanently leave the scene. The post-it notes were placed on a timeline map in chronological order.
• Discussion of issues arising out of the timeline activity. Discussion on different approaches and why the group chose the method that they did.
• Discussion on selected tasks - identification of key problems, relative to own experiences.
• Review of selected problems in order of priority, ideas for solutions.

2.4 Analysis

The analysis was undertaken in two main parts. Firstly, the basic information was summarised, under the following headings:

• Incident types and performance data
• Roles and responsibilities
• Key Issues
• Solutions identified.

Secondly, the data gathered during the workshops, interviews and site visits were used to break down and analyse the tasks performed by each organisation in detail.

Section 3 describes the basic information obtained from the workshops whilst Section 5 describes the key findings from the task analysis.

Figure 1: Flow Chart of Activities

[ Previous ] [ Contents ] [ Next ]