7.2 Memorandum of Understanding with the policy and judicial entities

A MOU   is a good way of defining and ensuring a clear understanding of each organization’s incident response roles and responsibilities with each of the external organisations who could be involved in the response to an incident.
  • It is important to organize and agree an MOU   before incidents occur as it could well prove difficult to achieve consensus during the stress of an incident response. It will then be able to do so without delay, thus reducing total incident response time and contributing to the quickest possible resumption of train circulation.
  • A typical MOU   covers the following aspects in relation to on and off site incident response, to management and to off-site investigation:
    • Purpose;
    • Scope;
    • Definitions;
    • Legal framework and responsibilities;
    • Notification arrangements;
    • Site command, control, roles and relationships;
    • Site safety;
    • Site access control;
    • Securing services of specialists (doctors, morticians)
    • Incident site management;
    • Identification of operational safety aspects of the incident to enable risk mitigation;
    • Welfare on site;
    • Media management;
    • Investigation arrangements.

A MOU   needs to be prepared and signed off in advance, to ensure that when an incident occurs, each responder already knows which actions it is expected to take.

A MOU   should define the agreed principles to be applied between the IM and an external agency; in order to minimize potential problems with the management of the response to an incident.

last update: 2014-09-17 Print