Health and Safety for Beginners Forums

Does anyone have any procedures for dealing with the control of abandoned hot works during an emergency evacuation?

In line with most responsible persons, we have a very strict hot work permit system which includes a one hour (sometimes two hour) Cool down period, where hot works are ceased but staff stay on site effectively fire watching.

Obviously we have procedures for accounting for staff and visitors. On two large city centre sites - staff just disappear into the local area as there is no space to assemble. This includes anyone engaged on hot works!

At all sites, the fire coordinators have checklists for evacuation sweeps, but do not get informed about any live hot works that have been abandoned. Similarly, we haven't got a process to inform the fire service of live hot works. Contractors will often just sit in their vans during evacuations, drink tea or sleep!

I will be addressing this in due course but wonder what others have in place to cover this risk?

In my RAF days, I know one of the signatures on any Hot Works permit used to be the Stn Fire Section, so they knew every day what hot works were going on.
I would add it to the info provided to the Assembly Point controller or whoever is in charge outside, whatever they're being called.