News Archive

If you were in Perth in 2010 on March 22, it’s probably etched in your memory for all the wrong reasons. On this day a mighty hail storm ripped through the city, damaging tens of thousands of cars in what would be WA’s costliest natural disaster in history.

At UWA alone, there was $30million worth of damage and the event required one of the largest responses from the Critical Incident Management Team (CIMT) in recent memory.

Campbell Thomson, Director of the Office of Research Enterprise, is also the Chair of CIMT, a role he took over last year.

“For any critical incident that has an effect on staff, students, visitors and even animals, there is an underlying process in place to ensure the safety and wellbeing of our community,” says Campbell.

“As CIMT Chair, it is my job to determine whether or not an incident would be declared critical. I receive information about incidents that occur and use this to evaluate the severity, and if an institutional level response is required.”

When an incident is determined to be critical, the CIMT is activated to manage the institutional response.

“For example, UWA’s response to the 2010 Perth storm was managed through the CIMT and included major clean up coordination, liaison with emergency services, injury and damage assessment and restoration of key activities such as graduation.

“Essentially the team manages the operational requirements and logistics of the issue. It also manages the communications that go to staff, students, other key stakeholders and media about the incident, which may be through emails, social media or face-to-face when appropriate and possible.”

Campbell believes that most staff probably don’t know much about the CIMT or its role during an incident which can affect the team’s effectiveness.

“This team is the governing body when a critical incident is declared. The Vice-Chancellor and Executive are certainly kept up-to-date in relation to the matter, but all decisions are made by the CIMT and during an incident this is the group of people that the community should take direction from,” he says.

“One thing we’re really urging staff to do is update their contact details and emergency contact or next of kin details through HR’s Employee Self Service portal.  During the recent IT outage, while it wasn’t declared a critical incident we still needed to get the message out to staff that they would not be able to access their emails or other information on the server, and that some IT systems were down. “

“We were limited to using social media, however if we’d had the ability to use text messages as well it would have resulted in more thorough communication. I absolutely understand that people have privacy concerns but our systems are very secure and these numbers are vital should an extreme emergency occur and we need to locate staff to ensure their wellbeing or inform them of a safety issue.”

The IT outage in April also emphasised the importance of contingency planning.

“Robyn Klaebe, UWA’s Business Continuity Manager, is approaching business managers to discuss how to develop business continuity plans and is happy to discuss the process in advance if that would be helpful to people,” he says.

Ultimately Campbell wants to reassure the UWA community that should a critical incident occur, the health and safety of those affected is paramount and there is a team in place to enable a coordinated approach.

“Whether you’re on Crawley campus, or overseas for a conference, if a serious incident occurs the team will work hard to do everything to ensure people are accounted for, communicated with and kept safe,” he says.

If you ever see something that looks suspicious or an incident occurs that needs managing by the CIMT, call UWA Security in the first instance on 08 6488 2222.

Watch this video to hear Campbell speak about research impact at UWA, the upcoming UWA Research Week from 5th to 9th September 2016 and his life outside the University.