Decision-making

On 22 October 2025, the Operational Preparedness, Response and Resilience Committee approved change request O.G. CC 107 – Incident command – Decision-making.

The change request focuses on the removal of ‘operational discretion’, which includes updates to three sections of the Incident command: Knowledge, skills and competence product (sometimes referred to as the Foundation material):

• Introduction
• Command skills and the role of the commander
• Decision-making
• Managing stress
• Personal resilience

Updates have also been made to the Operational Guidance for Incident command, including:

• Hazard – Ineffective incident command of an incident
• Control measure – Decision-making

All references to operational discretion have been removed, and the application of operational discretion is no longer included as part of the decision-making process.

The opportunity has been taken to amend the term ‘incident commander’ to ‘commander’, as much of the content should be used by the wider command team. This approach will be extended when the Operational Guidance for Incident command is next reviewed. This is likely to commence in 2026-27.

To support these changes, the following strategic actions have been archived:

• SA-16923
• SA-16953
• SA-16954
• SA-16955
• SA-16925

The following new strategic actions have been added:

• SA-183566
• SA-183568
• SA-183570
• SA-183572