Major incident manager

Band 7 · Incident manager · 496 job evaluation points

UK GDaD PCF level: Major incident manager

Most often performed at Civil Service grade SEO or G7.

A major incident manager manages significant outages and crises and reports issues to problem management. At this level, you will work closely with workplace services, infrastructure, applications operators and communication managers. In some departments, you may also be the head of service.

Contains public sector information from the UK Government Digital and Data Profession Capability Framework (https://understand-digital-data-roles-skills.service.gov.uk/), licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0. © Crown copyright.

Responsibilities

Lead the response to major incidents, such as outages of the electronic patient record, network failures, and cyber attacks.
Run incident calls that bring together technical teams, suppliers, clinical leads, and communications staff.
Advise clinical and operational leaders on when to start and stop downtime and business continuity procedures.
Brief senior leaders and, where needed, link with the organisation's emergency response arrangements.
Lead post-incident reviews and make sure lessons are learned and acted on.
Develop and test major incident plans with business continuity and emergency planning leads.

Skills

Skill	Expected level	What this level means
Asset and configuration managementUK GDaD PCF	Awareness (1)	You can: track, log and correct information to protect assets and components
Availability and capacity managementUK GDaD PCF	Working (2)	You can: manage service components to ensure they meet business needs and key performance indicators (KPIs)
Change managementUK GDaD PCF	Working (2)	You can: analyse and assess the impact of change document change requests action changes from change requests
Community collaborationUK GDaD PCF	Practitioner (3)	You can: work collaboratively in a group, actively networking with others adapt feedback to ensure it’s effective and lasting use your initiative to identify problems or issues in the team dynamic and rectify them identify issues through Agile ‘health checks’ with the team, and help to stimulate the right responses
Continual service improvementUK GDaD PCF	Working (2)	You can: identify process optimisation opportunities with guidance, and contribute to the implementation of proposed solutions
Continuity managementUK GDaD PCF	Working (2)	You can: manage the runbooks and the processes around service continuity test the runbooks to ensure that service availability is maintained
Incident managementUK GDaD PCF	Practitioner (3)	You can: lead the investigation and resolution of incidents
Ownership and initiativeUK GDaD PCF	Practitioner (3)	You can: take accountability for issues that occur and be proactive in searching for potential problems achieve excellent user outcomes
Problem managementUK GDaD PCF	Working (2)	You can: initiate and monitor actions to investigate patterns and trends to resolve problems effectively consult specialists where required determine the appropriate resolution and assist with its implementation determine preventative measures
Service focusUK GDaD PCF	Practitioner (3)	You can: see the bigger picture by taking groups of services and investigating how to get the best of underlying services
Service management framework knowledgeUK GDaD PCF	Awareness (1)	You can: show you have a Level 3 service management framework qualification
Technical understandingUK GDaD PCF	Working (2)	You can: understand the core technical concepts related to the role, and apply them with guidance
User focusUK GDaD PCF	Practitioner (3)	You can: collaborate with user researchers and can represent users internally explain the difference between user needs and the desires of the user champion user research to focus on all users prioritise and define approaches to understand the user story, guiding others in doing so offer recommendations on the best tools and methods to use
Understanding health and care servicesThis reference	Practitioner (3)	You can: analyse how a service fits into care pathways across organisations work with clinicians, care staff, and patients to shape digital services explain the effect of digital decisions on care, safety, and staff workload
Information governance and data protectionThis reference	Working (2)	You can: apply data protection principles to your work contribute to data protection impact assessments handle information requests and records correctly
Clinical risk managementThis reference	Working (2)	You can: take part in hazard workshops and contribute to a hazard log follow the clinical risk management process for your work provide evidence for a clinical safety case, such as test results
Security operationsThis reference	Working (2)	You can: monitor alerts and triage them using runbooks gather evidence and escalate events tune simple detection rules under guidance
Organisational risk managementThis reference	Working (2)	You can: record and update risks for your area suggest controls and track actions

Typical qualifications and experience

Substantial experience of managing incidents in complex, high-availability services.
An advanced IT service management qualification, or equivalent experience.

Band 7 outline

Knowledge: Highly developed specialist knowledge, typically to master's level or equivalent experience.
Autonomy: Works to organisational policy; decides how results are achieved; is the expert others consult.
Scope: Several products or services, or a specialist function.
Leadership: Leads a team or a professional practice area.
Accountability: Delivery of a service or specialist function, and its budget if held.

Job evaluation (illustrative)

Factor	Level	Level summary	Points
Communication and relationship skills	5	Gives highly complex or contentious information needing developed persuasion and negotiation, presents to large groups, or communicates where there are significant barriers to acceptance.	45
Knowledge, training, and experience	6	Specialist knowledge across the range of the specialism (postgraduate diploma level or equivalent).	156
Analytical and judgemental skills	4	Judgements on complex facts or situations needing analysis, interpretation, and comparison of options.	42
Planning and organisational skills	4	Plans a broad range of complex activities or strategies, adjusting them as needed.	42
Physical skills	3	Developed skills needing speed or accuracy, such as advanced keyboard use.	27
Responsibility for patient and client care	1	Helps patients, clients, or relatives during incidental contact.	4
Responsibility for policy and service development	3	Implements policies for own area and proposes changes that affect other areas.	21
Responsibility for financial and physical resources	3	Authorises payments, buys some assets or supplies, monitors or holds a delegated budget, or maintains assets.	21
Responsibility for people	3	Manages a group of staff day to day, teaches core or specialist training, or gives core HR advice.	21
Responsibility for information resources	5	Designs and develops major information systems, or runs information systems for several services as the main duty.	34
Responsibility for research and development	2	Regularly does research, development, trials, or equipment and system testing as part of the job.	12
Freedom to act	4	Results are defined, but the job holder decides how to achieve them, within broad policy.	32
Physical effort	1	Sitting, standing, and walking, with little physical effort.	3
Mental effort	4	Frequent prolonged concentration, or occasional intense concentration.	18
Emotional effort	2	Occasional exposure, or frequent indirect exposure, to distressing circumstances.	11
Working conditions	2	Occasional unpleasant conditions, frequent travel or outdoor work, or near-continuous screen use on most days.	7
Total (Band 7: 466 to 539)			496

Mental effort reflects frequent prolonged concentration during major incidents, often out of hours. Emotional effort reflects frequent indirect exposure to the effect of major outages on patient care.