| Accounting for employees following evacuation
The events of 9/11 raised awareness for everyone about the value of the fire drills that most of us merely tolerate and accept as common place. Whether evacuation drills are in schools, offices, our homes, or even hotels, there is no question about the importance of safely getting out of a building in an emergency. But getting out is only the first step. Public safety workers, responding to an emergency, need to know who needs help, whether everyone is accounted for, and who is still in the building? How, as a business continuity manager, facility manager, safety officer, or emergency worker do you know? The Occupational Safety and Health Administration
and most local safety regulations require that businesses have evacuation
plans that guide building occupants to safe locations away from
an emergency, but there is little information about effective methods
to account for everyone once they have made their exit. Fire fighters
and paramedics don’t want to endanger their lives looking
for people who are safe, nor do they want to miss anyone who may
be trapped or need help. ‘Find Your Flag’ is the brainchild of company facility managers and employee safety committees. The program facilitates not only a safe evacuation, but accounting for all company employees and visitors. As with all safety programs, employee awareness is essential to success. At Premier, Inc., every workstation, office, and group work area has been assigned a flag colour. Laminated cards with the flag colour and brief evacuation instructions are placed in every work area. As with most evacuation plans, teams of employees are trained and responsible to quickly search assigned areas of each floor, and direct all employees, visitors, and others to safe exits. The unique component of the Find Your Flag program is that team leaders have an emergency kit they take with them as they exit the building. In addition to the expected flashlights and first aid items, each kit contains the coloured flag for their assigned area and a current employee roster. When the receptionist leaves the building, he or she takes the visitor log, and lists of visitors participating in classes or scheduled events. As employees exit the building they simply look for their assigned flag colour and report in to that group, a safe distance away from the building. Employee rosters are updated regularly; and assigned colour groups are manageable sizes, allowing for quick and easy accounting of employees, as they check in or are reported on by fellow employees. If an employee is not accounted for, emergency personnel can be quickly notified. Visitors accompany the employee with whom they were meeting out of the building, and are matched against the visitor log. Why is Find Your Flag successful? • Rosters for each colour group are sized to minimise the time required to locate names. Colour groups tend to be one or more department teams, which further facilitates identifying who was and who was not working when the emergency occurred. • Confirmation that employees are or
are not accounted for is quickly provided to the facility site manager
or emergency personnel, reducing their response times and lessening
risk to fire, emergency, or police personnel. Implementation is
simple: • Flags or pennants are available from a variety of sources. Perhaps the best method is to use shock-corded tent poles which easily collapse into an emergency kit, and are nearly 8 ft. tall when unfolded. Employee awareness is the key to successful evacuation accounting. Employees must understand the program, be in the habit of letting co-workers know where they are, and be aware of where co-workers are. Surviving an emergency takes team work. Companies, individual employees, and building management must all work together to ensure the safest work environment possible. David Shimberg is a Certified Business Continuity Planner, formerly with Bank of America. He is currently chairman of the Contingency Planning Association of the Carolinas, and vice chairman of the All Hazards Advisory Committee for Charlotte, NC. Mr. Shimberg has also presented at professional conferences and meetings. He has retained copyright to this article: request reprint permission by contacting: chairman@cpaccarolinas.org
•Date:
18th June 2004 •Region: N.America •Type:
Article •Topic: BC
facilities |
