Highways Agency

• Traffic Incident Management Bulletin

November 2007

Background

The Traffic Incident Management (TIM) Bulletin has recently focused on the use of exercises, stressing their importance in sharing and establishing best practice in multi-agency incident management. To highlight some current areas of good practice and the lessons learnt identified in the debrief, this article focuses on Exercise Encore as described in last month’s article ‘Exercising – Update’.

Exercise Encore took place on the 4th October 2007. It was a multi-agency exercise which involved the following incident responders:

• Highways Agency
• Traffic Officer Service
• Police
• Fire and Rescue Service
• British Red Cross
• Recovery Agent
• Other suppliers

The exercise offered learning opportunities for all incident management stakeholders and additionally for the Traffic Learning Centre and the Traffic Incident Management Team. Learning points from designing and managing the exercise were captured and used to plan the next events.

In addition to the ‘headline’ aims above, there were some further potential ‘learning opportunities’ identified prior to the exercise taking place. These concentrated particularly upon the Traffic Officer Service’s processes and procedures but were designed to improve interactions with key stakeholders associated with efficient incident resolution. These were as follows:

• Principles of Bronze Command
• Traffic Officer Service Procedures and Guidance
• Emergency Customer Welfare
• Silver Command
• Traffic Investigation Unit
• Vehicle Recovery

To test these ideas, the scenario below was designed to present opportunities for cross-agency learning against the themes detailed above.

• A single Traffic Officer crew are first on scene to an apparent road traffic collision
• The existent tailback includes a coach with passengers
• The coach is stationary in lane 1/2 near the front of a tailback
• Collision involves a large goods vehicle/tanker (LGV) resting on its offside, blocking lanes 2 and 3
• Secondary damaged passenger vehicles to the rear of the LGV
• Some serious injuries but no fatalities
• Nature of obstruction requires specialist recovery
• Anticipated incident duration of less than 3 hours

You can view an approximate illustration of the above incident scene.

You can also view a pictorial display (263KB PDF) of the run of events during the exercise.

Following the completion of Exercise Encore, hot and cold incident debriefs were conducted including a debrief of the exercising process, allowing the identification of several learning points. These learning points are detailed within the following section.

Key Learning Points

Prior to the exercise taking place, one of the TLC’s objectives was to acquire and record learning opportunities from the exercise to assist them in designing and delivering future multi-agency events.

In addition, good practice has also been identified. This will be disseminated to all participating organisations with the objective of improving each responders' incident management procedures.

Detailed below are a selection of learning points supplied by participants, observers and facilitators:

• Police were happy with the communication/liaison with all on-scene responders. The Police commented on how well the Traffic Officers conducted the carriageway closure and secured the incident scene.
• During the debrief, the Recovery Agent's Representative and other responders commented on their difficulties in identifying the Traffic Officer Bronze Commander. The debrief concluded that adaptations to Traffic Officer PPE should be considered which will enable 'key' personnel to be identified easily. This also applies to other incident responders present at the incident scene.
• The exercise enabled all incident responders to practice and develop new procedures and equipment in a sterile environment.
  The Recovery Agent trialled a new piece of lifting equipment. 
• All incident responders commented that on scene communication was "extremely good" and helped to manage the incident more efficiently. In addition, communication with the Regional Control Centre was also "very good".
• The exercise presented each responder with the opportunity to 'learn' more about the other organisations present. This specifically focussed on the following:
• roles 
• responsibilities
• operational constraints
• It was noted within the debrief that Traffic Officers and the Fire and Rescue Service now understand more about the role of the Recovery Agent, including their requirements and how they can be assisted.
• The Fire and Rescue Service instigated a multi-agency liaison meeting 48 minutes from the beginning of the incident however this was largely due to the nature of the incident i.e. two incidents being managed simultaneously. Ideally all lead officers from each incident responder should have conducted a meeting earlier.
• Appropriate representation - ensure that the correct agencies are represented during the exercise. If another stakeholder assists and fills in for an absent responder ensure this is communicated to all participants.
• Additional equipment - the inclusion of a number of additional pieces of equipment and resources were suggested to improve future events:
• fully operational radios
• PA system - relay communications to all
• platform for delivering debrief
• mannequins or actors to represent injured parties
• Further resources - ensure that each organisation involved, briefs enough suitable personnel for the exercise, in case a participant has to drop out at the last minute.

The Future

An Encore DVD is being developed for the national Traffic Officer Service. This will be released shortly, so please keep reading the bulletin to find out more! 

Summary

A report has been published and distributed by the TLC indicating that Operation Encore was a success. The general feeling is that further exercises, similar to Operation Encore should be run again in the future as feedback highlighted it to be an ”excellent form of training”.

In addition the North West have a planned exercise for February 6th 2008, the bulletin will present their findings shortly after.

Has this article been worthwhile reading? Why not take a moment to send us your comments, thoughts or questions. Please e-mail TIMbulletin@highways.gsi.gov.uk