After Action Reviews

Management of an incident will only be effective when there is an ongoing process of evaluation. The development of After Action Reviews (AARs) is critical to continuous growth and promotion of effective methods for Traffic Incident Management across the State. An AAR allows for the strengths and weaknesses of an incident response to be analyzed and common successful factors, as well as opportunities for improvement, to be developed and shared among others. 

An “incident” is defined as any non-recurring event that causes a reduction of roadway capacity or an abnormal increase in demand. Such events include traffic crashes, disabled vehicles, spilled cargo, highway maintenance and reconstruction projects, and special non-emergency events (e.g., ball games, concerts, or any other event that significantly affects roadway operations).

The purpose of an AAR is to:

• Share successful methodologies across various disciplines
• Identify areas of improvement to be utilized for future incidents

MaineDOT After Action Review Form

The purpose of this form is to document the response, actions, and recovery from an event or incident. The focus of the form is to capture the performance activities as they occurred to determine what happened, why it happened and how to sustain the strengths of the response and improve on any identified weaknesses.

The goal of collecting the information is first to identify activities that contributed to positive outcomes, so they can be replicated. The secondary goal is to recognize some weaknesses that may have resulted from specific circumstances so that improvements can be made at future event or incident scenes. The use of this form will assist with identifying policies and procedures that need to be developed in specific areas to improve future performance and if additional training, exercising or planning is needed by response personnel.