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Environmental & Risk Management / Emergency Preparedness

Emergency Preparedness: Application Overview

With the Risk Management domain's Emergency Preparedness application, you can prepare your facility and your FM staff to respond to and manage all types of emergencies, from a non-life threatening flood in your data center, to a potentially more serious event such as a chemical spill in a biotechnology lab.

Use the Emergency Preparedness application to record, access, and update the critical facility information that you need in the event of an emergency. The Emergency Preparedness application can help ensure that you have the information you need at your fingertips, and the ability to communicate this information during a workplace emergency.

The sequence below outlines how to use the application. Note that for the drawing components of the application (drawing egress plans, hazardous material plans, and various facility zones), you use the Smart Client's drawing tasks, as outlined below. Also, for defining your systems and their dependencies you can use either the Smart Client or Web Central tasks; the tasks are offered in both environments.

In the event of an emergency, remote access to your facility data is particularly handy because you may not be able enter the building during the emergency to access your database. Sites, therefore, often mirror their facilities databases and Web server at a remote location. This ensures that if your primary database and Web server are disabled during an emergency, your staff, as well as emergency first responders, will still be able to remotely access and update data using the Web.

Planning for an Emergency (Business Process Owner)

1. Define basic information about your facility.

• Defining Geographic Locations
• Defining Locations
• Defining Organizations
• Defining Companies

2. Develop emergency contact information for employees and key vendors.

• Defining an Emergency Contacts List
• Entering Employee Emergency Contact Information

3. For each division, create a recovery team list and an escalation contact list.
   During an emergency, recovery team members verify the safety of employees and also may be responsible for getting a division back in operation. Recovery team members can use an escalation contact list – a listing of employees who have authority in an emergency to expedite decisions and purchases for each recovery team -- to quickly approve decisions and purchases necessary for returning the division to an operational mode.

• Defining an Escalation Contacts List
• Creating a Recovery Team List

4. Define facility systems and dependent systems. (This can also be developed by ARCHIBUS Smart Client users.)

• Recording Critical System Information

Planning for an Emergency (CAD User)

The CAD user will work with the Smart Client Extension for AutoCAD to add egress plans, hazardous material zone, sprinkler zones, and so forth to floor plan drawings. Knowing the location of these areas on a floor is vital to responding to and containing an emergency. This information is typically supplied to first responders and the emergency response team.

Egress routes, hazmat plans, and zone drawings should be reviewed and updated on a regular basis, especially after a construction project, cubicle reconfiguration, or employee move.

1. Draw your building's egress plans and hazardous material (HAZMAT) plans.

• Draw Egress Plans
• Draw Hazardous Material Plans

2. Draw your building's zones, including sprinkler, security, emergency,and HVAC.

• Draw Zones

Responding to an Emergency

Both internal employees and first responders can access facility information in order to respond to the emergency, update the status of employees and facilities, and prepare to continue operations once the situation is contained.

First Responders

Firefighters, police, and others responding to an emergency are often provided with a URL of the corporate intranet so that they can sign into the system and access egress plans, room plans, hazardous material plans, sprinkler zones, and so forth. Knowing the locations of these areas on the floor plan are vital to responding to the emergency and ensuring safety.

General Staff

In the event of a building emergency, general staff may be instructed to not report to work. Staff members can access the corporate intranet from home and then review advisory bulletins about the current building situation.

Emergency Response and Recovery Teams

Your site will have designated staff to be on emergency response (responding to an emergency) and recovery teams (preparing to resume operations after the emergency has been contained). Depending on the size of your site, these may be distinct roles or the functions may be handled by the same person.

• The Emergency Response team works with the first responders to ensure employee safety and inform emergency contacts of the situation at hand.
• Once the emergency is contained, recovery team members typically create advisory bulletins, update employee status,and begin work on resuming operations, working with an escalation contact list if necessary.

Assessment Team

Once an emergency is contained and safety is guaranteed, sites need to resume business operations as quickly as possible. They may need to move to a contingency location or operate with limited equipment and employees. The first step in getting started with preparing to resume operations is to assess the situation and determine the usability of assets.

The assessment team typically travels throughout the facility to assess the condition of rooms, equipment, and systems. They can note if these items are usable, temporarily unavailable, or non-recoverable. Management then uses this information to determine the next step in resuming business operations, prioritizing purchases, and so forth.

• Updating System, Room, and Equipment Status
• Updating Facility Status by Using Zone Drawings

Managers

With the information provided by the assessment team and other users, managers are able to make decisions required for resuming operations and eventually returning to normal operations. Managers can also Create Advisory Bulletins for staff and review manager-specific advisory bulletins.