Events represent an event in a business process. Start event symbol - Signals the first step of a process. Intermediate event symbol - Represents any event that occurs between a start and end event. End event symbol - Signals the final step in a process.

The event symbols, often called events, represent hardware failures, software failures, human errors or other lowest level occurrences that alone or in combination can lead to more significant failures.

Incident: The adverse outcome being investigated (symbol: diamond) is drawn to the right of the ECF timeline. This symbol can also be used for 'near miss' incidents with a potential adverse outcome. Events: Events represent actions (symbol: rectangle) e.g. 'pipe wall ruptured' and not 'the pipe wall had a crack in it'.