Incident investigation report template and app
An incident investigation has to establish what happened, why the controls failed and what will stop it happening again — in a form that holds up if the regulator asks for it. Methods like ICAM structure the analysis into absent or failed defences, individual and team actions, task and environmental conditions, and organisational factors. SurveyThanks gives the investigator a form for the scene, witness interviews and evidence, then renders your investigation template with the timeline and contributing factors drawn from that data.
Built for safety managers running teams of roughly 3–50 inspectors.
Sample ICAM investigation report
An illustrative excerpt. The site, readings and findings are fictional; the layout is yours to set.
ICAM investigation report
5. Contributing factors — Forklift contact with pedestrian
- Incident reference
- INC-2026-014 (fictional)
- Date of incident
- 11 August 2026
- Method
- ICAM
| Factor | Finding | Category |
|---|---|---|
| Exclusion zone at dock 4 | Floor markings worn; no physical barrier | Category: Absent defence |
| Operator reversing without spotter | Spotter reassigned to unloading at start of shift | Category: Individual action |
| Lighting at dock 4 | Two of four high-bay lights not working | Category: Task / environment |
| Traffic management plan | Last reviewed 2022, before dock 4 was added | Category: Organisational |
Fields captured on site
Your firm builds the form in-app, so these are a starting point rather than a fixed schema. Every field is captured on the device, with or without signal, and lands in the ICAM investigation report where your template puts it.
Incident details
- Date, time and location
- Incident type
- Notifiable incident (yes / no)
- Regulator notified and reference
- Injury or damage description
Evidence
- Scene photos
- Witness interviews (audio with consent)
- Documents reviewed
- Timeline entries
Analysis and actions
- Contributing factor
- ICAM category
- Corrective action
- Owner and due date
Standards the report works to
- Work Health and Safety Act 2011Model WHS Act — Part 3 Incident notification
- Whether the incident was notifiable, and the duty to preserve the site, recorded at the top of the report.
- AS/NZS ISO 45001:2018Occupational health and safety management systems — clause 10.2
- Incident, nonconformity and corrective action requirements for clients with a certified system.
Load the standards you hold into your reference library and the drafted prose is written against them rather than against a general model.
How the ICAM investigation report gets built
Capture it once, offline
Your firm builds the incident investigation form in-app — 25 field types, nesting repeatable groups, compound AND/OR visibility rules, reusable modules and calculated fields. Field capture works with no signal: jobs, forms, photos, notes and audio all queue in an idempotent outbox that only clears once the server confirms receipt.
Link it to your areas, tasks and plant
Enter areas, tasks and plant once, as a register. Every one of your hazards, controls and findings then points at a stored row rather than a name somebody typed — and the links survive a disconnected device.
Render your own template
The ICAM investigation report renders into the Word template you already use — your letterhead, your section order, your clause library — with conditionals, loops over repeats, composable sub-templates and photo grids.
Reviewed before it leaves
You write the review framework: a checklist of what a ICAM investigation report must contain, plus the prose standards you would mark a junior against. Link it to a report template and it runs every time that template renders. Each finding comes back graded info, minor or major, quoting the sentence at fault, and a person accepts or dismisses every one.
Because the structured submission behind the report is held too, the review is a comparison rather than a proofread: The report says all plant is guarded; the form carries an unguarded drive shaft in the workshop.
Checks a WHS consulting framework usually carries
- Every finding cites the regulation, code or clause it is assessed against
- Every hazard has a control and a person responsible for it
- Risk ratings are applied consistently across findings of the same kind
- Corrective actions are specific enough to be actioned and dated
Questions
- Can witness interviews be recorded?
- Yes, as audio on the device, with consent capture built in and state-by-state guidance on recording. The transcript can propose values for form fields, which the investigator accepts or rejects.
- Can we use ICAM, or our own method?
- Either. The contributing-factor categories are options you define, and your method document can sit in the standards library that drafted sections are written against.
- Can the report keep personal details out of the distributed copy?
- Your template decides what renders. A common pattern is roles in the distributed report and names held only in the submission.
- Can we capture the scene before the site is cleaned up, with no signal?
- Photos, notes and audio are taken offline and upload once the device reconnects, so the scene record is not lost to a dead zone.
What this is not
Worth knowing before you book a demo, so neither of us wastes the half hour.
- Not field-service dispatch. No timesheets, no parts, no inventory. Scheduling exists to get an inspector to a site.
- No signature capture. If your deliverable has to carry a signed sign-off on the artefact itself, this is not the tool yet.
- Field capture is what works offline — jobs, forms, photos, notes and audio. Reports, chat, scheduling and the inbox need a connection.
- No client portal. Reports go out as a file or a password-protected link.
Other WHS consulting work we cover
- Manual handling assessmentsTask risk assessment
- Near miss capture programsNear miss register
- Noise exposure assessmentsNoise dosimetry report
- PPE compliance auditsPPE audit report
- Psychosocial hazard assessmentsPsychosocial risk report
- Remote worker site checksRemote site report
- Workplace WHS auditsWHS audit report
- Contractor prequalification auditsPrequal audit report
Other disciplines
Rebuild your ICAM investigation report in SurveyThanks
Bring the Word template you already send clients. If you are coming off another field-forms tool, a filled report can be uploaded, read field by field, and re-rendered into your template.