Incident reports are an official record of what happened during certain types of events including property damage, bodily injury, and public relations. They are used to ensure that organizational teams complete all necessary tasks in order to resolve an incident. They are also used during insurance claims, and they function as legal documents during lawsuits.
Property managers, security guards, and police officers are responsible for regularly writing effective incident reports. When incident reports are ineffective, they expose organizations to liability. Ineffective incident reports also require revision and follow-up, and they delay resolution of the incident.
Write in the First Person
Write the first sentence as “On or about [time and date], I, [your name], [your title]” and then describe how you became aware of the incident. Begin with who or what brought the incident to your attention.
Use “I,” “me,” and “my” to describe what you directly observed, heard, said, and did.
Write Chronologically
Write your experience of the incident point by point and event by event from beginning to end.
Do not attempt to “connect the dots” of the incident in your description. Simply write what you observed, heard, said and did in a step-by-step order.
Write Detail
Include as much detail as possible by answering each of the following questions about your experience of this incident.
- What non-human events did you observe?
- What did you observe involved or affected people do?
- What did you hear involved or affected people say?
- What did you say?
- What did you do?
Answer “who,” “where,” “when,” and “how” about each of the above questions as well. When identifying locations, use numbers and directions, and refer to nearby structures.
Write Objectively
Do not write what you think happened, assume happened, or believe happened. Do not assign blame or answer “why” about involved or affected people’s actions (unless you directly heard them say it).
Do write only the facts (what you observed, heard, said, and did). Do write only to inform the reader of what you know.
Proofread
Finally, read your description a second and a third time to correct your spelling and grammar errors. Read it out loud. Your ears will catch mistakes that your eyes missed.