Emergency Preparedness Plans

[Brett Day SP]

The project I'm on is now up for the review of it's EPP. We started off with the clients, which is over 90 pages long and has every scenario just short of alien invasion, the second coming, and a zombie apocalypse!

We have had an emergency drill and found that our communications procedure works well (we went from the war and peace document to a one page flowchart), however, during the de brief we found that the EPP was to unwieldy to be of practical use.

My thought is to make it a slimmed down document again with a flow chart and supporting notes.

Any thoughts, suggestions or ideas I can nick please to help make this something that works rather than looks impressive ???

[jonsi]

I'd break it down into small sections: Risk to life of persons on site (Major incident e.g life threatening or life changing accident, Fire, Flood) Risk to life of persons off site but FROM your site (neighbours) Risk to on-site buildings (collision with, collapse of, fire, explosion), Environmental Risk contained on site or uncontained to Air, Water & Land, External Threats (bombs, devices, chemical hazard in the post etc.) The responses to each will all tend to follow a similar path but with quite specific and different actions after the first 2 or 3 steps then it will fall back in line. Apply the KISS principle and you won't go far wrong. It can always become more comprehensive or more streamlined the longer you live with it.

Jonsi

[Messy]

I am with Jonsi on this and keep the emergency procedures to the absolute minimum - and perhaps drop the alien invasion (unless you are located near Roswell!!)

Where possible, use the same format, layout, font and overall style. Always have a summary sheet - a one page list or flow chart - at the front of each procedure for easy reference. Our summary sheets are kind of flow charts using colour, large font and block arrows which are printed on A0 paper. They can be placed on a desk and the whole procedure is visible at once. Details are provided further into the procedure

Laminated A3 copies of the flowcharts are kept in a meeting room which is designated for the Crisis Management Team

We use the same language throughout for roles and responsibilities, which it has led to some uniformity between (say) the flood, bomb and fire procedures. This makes them easier to remember and easier to read the documents when under pressure.

Lastly, get everyone involved. Train, drill and do desktop exercises all aimed at harvesting feedback with the aim of making the fewest procedures, pages and words do the most work. Amend and revise until your wife knows them as you talk them in your sleep (we are on revision 30+ in some procedures - after 4 years!!).

90 pages???? I dont think so!!

[dave247]

I inherlted one once that had 6 pages how to deal with a plane crashing in to this industrial site :-) it had all the rescue details in there.

I agree with the above, keep it simple as a document that big won't work, it needs to specific to your company and realistic because it will be a dust gatherer. I did a bcp project once and used a template bcp risk assessment that I put together and after briefing them sent it to each departments manager, they effectively wrote their own departments and after a each department saw each other's they went away and added what they had missed and I just collated all that into one plan and ensured that any any weaknesses had the fixes put in place.

[petesdragon1948]

more of a question... Does anybody have an example rescue plan they could share? I appreciate that all plans must be specific, but any help will do

Thanks