Emergency Action Plans: Are You Ready? (Part 8 - Putting Your EAPs To The Test)

Putting Your EAPs to the Test

During this series, we've discussed several of the common types of workplace emergencies, how to incorporate them into your organization's emergency action plans (EAPs), and best practices within the industry. We've met the legal minimums established by OSHA. Now what?

Now, we put the boots on the ground and prepare for the unthinkable.

Plan. Test. Review. Repeat.

Having an emergency action plan in writing and communicating it to your employees is all fine and dandy. However, just like everything else, you need to evaluate their understanding of it. You COULD do this in the form of a written exam, asking employees where the location of their rally points are, what each distinct tone represents, etc. But what fun is that if you don't get to sound the alarm, test the effectiveness of your plans, and get out of work for a little bit?

Before initiating an emergency preparedness drill (e.g., evacuation drill, shelter-in-place, active shooter drill, etc.), it needs to be properly planned out with the appropriate personnel well in advance. In order to efficiently evaluate a drill, you need to efficiently plan the drill.

Key Questions to Ask Yourself:

• Who needs to be involved in the planning stages? Will you need to incorporate a few of the front-line workers to assist with an orderly process?
• What type(s) of drills do you want to perform? Will it be a full-scale exercise? Tabletop Exercise?
• Are any drills specifically required by your insurance company or other AHJ?
• Have you reviewed your EAPs with your employees recently?
• What are your goals for the drill? You need to establish goals in regard to total time elapsed, documentation requirements, etc.
• Will the drill be announced or unannounced? If it's an active shooter drill, this should ALWAYS be announced, no questions asked. Aside from that, it's really up to you on how you want to do it. My recommendation (except for active shooter drills) is unannounced to catch them off guard.
• Will anyone need to stay back and shut down critical equipment?
• Who will activate the emergency notification?
• Do you want to involve outside agencies (e.g., fire dept., police, EMS)

Planning

Before initiating your emergency drills, you need to properly plan everything out, both administratively and operationally. You may need to meet several times before the drill in order to nail down all the specifics. Here are a few things to do during the planning stages:

• Ensure all of the proper stakeholders are involved in the planning stages. This should include a member(s) of upper management, the EHS Dept., and operations supervisors. If you want to include front-line workers, that is up to you, but it may be beneficial for the evaluation aspect of things. More sets of eyes equate to more attention to details.
• Check to ensure your means of egress are kept clear. If not, clear them out so that you can have an effective evacuation. Be sure to enforce these areas remaining clear at all times.
• Ensure the emergency notification equipment has been tested according to manufacturer's requirements.
• If a drill has never been performed (or hasn't been conducted in several years), conduct a tabletop exercise with management first to ensure they know what to do. If the supervisors are unaware of how to coordinate an orderly evacuation, you're simply setting yourself up for failure.

Time to Drill

Now, here's the fun part (unless your management and you're worried about losing money due to downtime). During the actual drill, there are specific items you will need to be continuously evaluating.

• When activated, is there any delay in the notification being transmitted?
• Can the notification message be audibly heard and understood in all parts of the facility/property?
• Does anyone continue to work after the emergency notification has been activated?
• You will need to time (down to the second) the entire drill. You will need to do this for ALL parts of the facility. If you have multiple rally points, you will need to time the length of the entire drill from the time the emergency notification is activated to the time everyone is assembled at the rally point and accounted for.
• If it's a shelter-in-place drill, how will everyone communicate with each shelter location? Two-way radio? Cell phones?
• If you're performing a tabletop exercise, does everyone understand the concept of the tabletop and grasp the idea of the "small scale" scenario?

Review

After the drill is complete, now you need feedback from everyone. Gather everyone together in the conference room, meeting room, etc. (you may have to have multiple meetings). Ask participants and evaluators for feedback on things they seen that went well, things that went wrong, or questions that were brought up during the drill.

Be sure to communicate the time the entire drill took, as well as what your goals and expectations were. If you exceeded the goals, praise them for their orderly evacuation, but keep in mind you want to continuously improve (During an emergency, every second counts!). If they did not meet your goals, discuss the areas for improvement and facilitate a group discussion on how they think it could be improved. Don't just make the call from the stand...involve your employees. An involved employee is an engaged employee!

Document your results and keep them on file so that you can compare future results and determine if improvements were made. If there were areas that the notifications were not heard, determine if additional strobes or speakers need to be installed. If there was confusion about where to go, make sure your rally points are easily identified and everyone knows their assigned locations.

Contact me if you would like a copy of an evacuation report form to use at your facility.

Summary

Evaluating the effectiveness of your emergency planning cannot be done in a classroom. You have to implement it, view it in action, and continuously improve. Seek out industry best practices, reach out to those within your professional network, or consult with your local OSHA office's consultation side. There are more than enough ways to prepare yourself - it's all a matter of how well your want to do it.

"By failing to prepare, you are preparing to fail." - Benjamin Franklin

If you would like more information about OSHA's emergency action plan standard, visit the OSHA website (or click here). It will provide the minimum requirements for EAPs. However, the most important thing is to continuously evaluate your program's effectiveness and look for ways to improve it. People's lives are depending on it!