Structuring Incident Management Plans

The IMP is designed to allow both first responders and managers within corporate offices, as well as field project locations to understand the risk natures and response measures appropriate to their company and its operations. The IMP provides logical and user‐friendly response guidelines and information capture formats to support pragmatic incident management. The design of the IMP is an aspect of contingency planning; its implementation is a functional element of crisis management. The structure of the IMP will reflect the level of detail required by the company, as well as the complexity of the operating conditions a business activity is working under. In addition, the level of experience, capability, and reliability of those implementing the IMP should be considered, as clearer instructions and more comprehensive details may be required for a management element with limited experience in crisis management—especially for complex crisis natures. Where possible, the company should seek to retain a level of consistency in IMP structuring and approach methodologies across the group (where appropriate in terms of unique projects and environmental conditions), so that personnel moving between projects become familiar with how the plan is laid out and how it works—and that consistency of approach is maintained. The structuring of the IMP should consider five main elements:

1. Instructions
2. Management tools
3. Education
4. Information‐gathering techniques
5. Response guidelines

Exhibit 1 illustrates some elements a company may wish to include within the IMP. The IMP should be designed to operate in isolation if necessary, despite working as a functional component of the Business Continuity Management Plan, as some user managers may not have access to supporting policies and plans, and the IMP is engineered to guide an inexperienced manager through a crisis quickly by the use of succinct and simple reference guides and instructions—reducing the need to refer to other documents in order to be effective. Where possible, elements of the Business Continuity Management Plan that are relevant to the IMP should be migrated into the plan to ensure consistency and to avoid unnecessary duplication of effort.

Exhibit 1: Structuring the Incident Management Plan

The policies, instructions, and threat overviews provide the user some instruction on how the IMP should be used, and the nature and aspects of the risks the company might face—placing the IMP into an understandable context. The data call templates guide responders as to what information they would be seeking and passing through the crisis management structure, and the response guidelines illustrate what practical measures should be taken to bring control to the situation.