Incident report template for Australian worksites

What an incident report should hold

An incident report is for the person who reads it later: an investigator, an insurer, a manager closing out actions. That reader wasn’t there. The report needs to answer their questions without a phone call. That’s why the fields start with the plain facts: the time, the place and who was there. Opinions about the cause come later.

• Report number
• Date and time of the incident
• Person involved: name, role and employer
• Witnesses and how to reach them
• Account in the person’s own words
• What they were doing just before
• Medical help given, and by whom
• Area made safe, and how

Write it the same day

Memory moves fast. Within a day people merge two events, lose the order and forget who stood where. A report written the same shift is worth far more than a tidy one written on Friday. It has the person’s own words and photos taken before anything was moved. A rough sketch of the scene with distances marked often beats a page of description.

Own words, then a manager’s view

The worker’s account and the manager’s conclusions are different things, and the record should keep them apart. In Haznote the AI’s draft, the worker’s original words and the manager’s edits are stored separately. The manager confirms the classification.

Pick the incident type

A fall asks about height and surface. A chemical spill asks about the product and the drain. Each type page below lists the extra questions that type needs, with its own template.

Serious injuries

A death or serious injury goes through the regulator, not just an internal form. The notifiable incidents page explains the triggers and links to each state. This template is for your own record.