The Inspector-General for Emergency Management recommends that Emergency Management Victoria – in consultation with relevant agencies – develop a system to manage personnel and asset deployments to all tiers of incident management to meet the needs of the emergency and support the health and wellbeing of personnel.
Where appropriate and within occupational health and safety requirements, this may include:
a) standardised shift rosters across agencies and incident management tiers
b) a single or integrated platform to allow consistent recording of shift times and locations
c) records of accreditation, qualification, training and currency.
EMV will work with the sector to examine the application and constraints of resource management, with a view to developing a standing state strategic resource plan. This review will include safety management systems and processes.
EMV advised that no formal review was undertaken in relation to this action. EMV is approaching this action by including resourcing as a standing item in the rolling State Operations Plans available on EM-COP.
EMV advised that, depending on the complexity of resourcing required to support operations, a more detailed stand-alone Strategic Resources Plan may be implemented for specific incidents. This will be determined on a case-by-case basis. For example, the State Strategic Resource Plan for 10–20 June 2021 provided resourcing guidance and noted potential resourcing issues and mitigations in relation to flooding events in Gippsland and Metropolitan areas and storm events in Loddon Mallee, Barwon South West and Hume regions across this period.
IGEM notes that improvements to safety management systems and processes are being addressed through other actions.