What is the main purpose of the OF-288 form?

The OF-288 form serves as a crucial tool for recording employee time on incidents. This form is specifically designed to capture the hours worked by personnel engaged in firefighting and other emergency management efforts. Accurate timekeeping is vital for various reasons, including ensuring that employees are compensated correctly for their hours worked, facilitating proper management of resources, and maintaining transparent records for federal reimbursement processes.

When incident response personnel fill out the OF-288, it allows for consistent and coordinated tracking of time, which is essential in managing personnel costs during large-scale incidents. Proper documentation helps in post-incident analysis and assists agency managers in understanding labor deployment and effectiveness.

While other options, such as filing incident reports or applying for hazard pay, are important aspects of incident management and compensation, they do not align with the specific function and primary purpose of the OF-288 form, which is solely focused on employee time recording.