Posted By TBC
Difficult one to suggest an answer without full plans of the area and building layout/fire exits/use/contents. It sounds like traffic is obviously a problem as will be the general wind direction, don't want your employees standing in smoke should the worst happen.
Suggest you try your local Fire Service for assistance - ask for the Fire Safety Officer. They are always willing to give free advice and if it comes from them, then you can't go wrong.

Good luck.

Posted By Stevek
i'am not sure how tall your building is,but one thing to consider is glass ect falling and planeing some distance from the building if there is a fire.

Posted By Cr8r
Thank you all so much - I thought I might be going mad.

Thanks for all the input - I've thought about glass blowing out etc and really they probably would be in the vicinity in their own car park. Haven't quite worked out how I'm going to solve this one - fying pan or fire - quite literally!

Posted By Cr8r
Jonathan, thanks, that's what I thought. I think I'm going to have to use their car park, the likelihood of the whole building going up and trapping them or not allowing them to maintain a safe distance is hopefully much less than the chances that a few of them will get squashed running through the traffic, which is almost certain in dark / panic mode.

I need to do a proper recce to see if they can escape from the car park by any other means than under the building's arches. This building's been there about 20 years so must have had a fire cert (it's got four floors above ground with a capacity of a couple of hundred if every bit of it was full up).

Joy of joys. Who wants to expand anyway?

Posted By Cr8r
Currently we deal with bombs the same way as fire and evacuate to the same places. This is something that I am wanting to revise but in separate enquiries with various sources over the last few months, have received totally conflicting information, including one from a similar organisation who have decided that unless a bomb's location is known, they will not evacuate at all, as, in common with us, they have several separate buildings and have assembly points in or via car parks, therefore they have decided that they are more likely to place people at risk by making them pass through or congregate in the place where a bomb might be. Not a sentiment I share but is obviously a problem. If someone phones up and says they left a bomb in your foyer, why would you trust them and evacuate only that area? Also it appears that the days of terrorists giving advance warning of bombs are probably over.

If anyone's curious, I had a recce of the new building's car park last night an there is a concealed gate (looks the same as the six foot wooden fencing along one side). Although I couldn't open it, it led to a pub car park, so they must have had an agreement to congregate there. There were some moss covered markings on the ground under the weeds leading people this way. Trouble is, we are a college and if we say to the students "on hearing the fire alarm, proceed to the pub car park", we are going to have several false alarms!