Incident Reporting and Post-incident Review

1. SCOPE

1.1 This procedure covers what happens after something goes wrong: how it is reported, to whom, in what time, how it is reviewed, and what must happen before the activity resumes.

1.2 It applies to every Racerbot activity in every location, including the team lab, corridor and hallway testing, another SFU lab, a competition venue and travel. It applies to every member, every Probation Member, every candidate present at a Racerbot activity, and every guest and visitor in Racerbot’s care.

1.3 It is an administrative procedure. It authorizes no technical work and does not replace the emergency instructions in the technical SOPs, which govern what you do in the moment.

1.4 It does not replace any SFU, FAS or facility reporting process. Where an external process applies it is followed as well, not instead (POL-03 §8.3 and §8.4, POL-09 §3).

1.5 Conduct matters, including harassment, bullying and dishonesty, are not safety incidents and are handled under POL-02.

2. PRINCIPLES

2.1 People first. Nothing here comes before caring for someone who is hurt or before evacuating.

2.2 Report the same day. A report written a week later is a guess.

2.3 No blame. The review asks what allowed the incident, not who to punish. Reporting in good faith is never held against anyone, including the person who caused it (POL-03 §8.2).

2.4 Near misses count. A near miss is the same event without the injury.

2.5 Stop until you understand. The activity does not resume on the assumption that it was a one-off.

2.6 If you are unsure whether something counts, report it.

3. WHAT MUST BE REPORTED

4. IMMEDIATE RESPONSE

In the moment, follow the emergency section of the SOP for the activity you were doing. The following applies regardless.

4.1 Make it safe. Stop the activity. Evacuate if there is fire, smoke or venting.

4.2 Look after anyone hurt. Call 911 for anything beyond minor, then Campus Public Safety. Send someone to meet responders at the building entrance.

4.3 Do not restart. The activity stays stopped (POL-03 §2.2).

4.4 Preserve what happened. Photograph the scene before anything is moved. Do not clean up or reset equipment beyond what safety requires.

4.5 Withdraw the equipment involved and label it out of service (POL-03 §4.9).

4.6 For a vehicle incident, freeze the software build and quarantine the battery pack.

4.7 Tell the Operations Coordinator and the executive leading the subteam the same day, by phone if it is serious.

5. REPORTING ROUTE AND TIMELINES

5.1 Where the incident happens in another lab or at an external venue, that facility’s supervisor or the event organizer is told as well, on the same timeline (POL-03 §1.3, POL-04 §9.4).

5.2 An incident involving a person outside the team, such as a passer-by struck by a vehicle or an injured visitor, is always treated as at least Serious, regardless of whether they said they were fine.

5.3 Every stop-work event under POL-03 §2 is recorded under this procedure, at Near miss severity or higher.

6. THE INCIDENT REPORT

6.1 The report is written by the person involved or the activity lead within 24 hours, and filed in the incident register. Two pages is plenty.

6.2 It records:

6.3 The report records what happened. Cause is established in §7, not here.

7. POST-INCIDENT REVIEW

7.1 When. For every Serious or Emergency incident, and for any near miss the Operations Coordinator judges significant. Held within seven calendar days.

7.2 Who attends. The Operations Coordinator, the executive leading the subteam, and the people involved. The President chairs where the incident involved injury or an emergency service response. The Faculty Sponsor and the FAS Safety Officer are invited for anything Serious or above.

7.3 What it establishes. The sequence of events, what allowed it to happen, and what changes.

7.4 It asks what in the system permitted this, whether training, procedure, equipment, workload or time pressure. A person making a mistake is usually the symptom.

7.5 It checks whether an existing control failed, was absent, or was present and bypassed. A control people routinely work around is a badly designed control.

7.6 Output. A short written outcome: findings, corrective actions with owners and dates, and whether the activity may resume.

7.7 A review whose only corrective action is that someone should be more careful has not found the cause.

8. CORRECTIVE ACTIONS AND RETURN TO SERVICE

8.1 Each corrective action has one named owner and one target date.

8.2 Where an SOP is wrong, incomplete or being bypassed, it is revised and reissued under a new version, referencing the incident, by the authority that adopted it (Constitution §9.2).

8.3 Where the risk assessment did not anticipate the hazard, it is updated and reissued.

8.4 Equipment stays withdrawn until inspected and, where necessary, repaired or replaced. A used extinguisher is replaced and a used response kit restocked before either goes back into service.

8.5 The activity resumes only when the Operations Coordinator and the executive leading the subteam both agree the immediate corrective actions are complete. For anything involving fire, injury or a person struck by a vehicle, the FAS Safety Officer is consulted before resumption.

8.6 The outcome is shared with the whole team.

9. RECORDS AND TREND REVIEW

9.1 The Operations Coordinator maintains the incident register: reference, date, category, summary, actions and status. It is part of handover under SOP-ADM-02 §3.4.

9.2 Reports containing personal or medical information are held with restricted access under POL-05 §4. Only the people who need it to run the process see it.

9.3 The Executive Board reviews the register at least once per semester for patterns and records any corrective action (POL-03 §8.5). Three minor cuts from the same tool is a tool problem.

9.4 The register and review outcomes are made available to the FAS Safety Officer and the Faculty Sponsor on request.

9.5 Records are kept for at least the retention period any applicable SFU requirement sets, and are never used for anything other than safety.

10. CONTACTS

Internal Affairs keeps current contact details for each office and circulates them with the emergency information. This table lists the roles, not the individuals, so that it does not go stale on turnover.

The assembly area for the Applied Sciences Building is the point shown on the evacuation map posted in the team lab. Do not re-enter until emergency or safety personnel authorize it.

11. REFERENCES

POL-03 §2 (stop-work), §4.9 (equipment out of service), §8 (incidents); POL-04 §9.4 (incidents away from campus); POL-05 §4 (member data); POL-09 §3 (FAS reporting); SOP-ADM-02 §3.4 (register at handover); SOP-ADM-08 §3.3 (incidents while travelling); SOP-TECH-01 §11; SOP-TECH-02 §9; SOP-TECH-04 §11; SOP-TECH-05 §11; SOP-TECH-06 §11.

REVISION HISTORY