Rank: Forum user 
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Hello. My company is going to be consolidating four buildings into one in the next couple of years and I am starting to think about how we deal with an evacuation. There will be 500+ people and the building design does not allow for partial evacuation by zones. I would envisage the use of fire marshals to sweep areas but I'm unsure how to deal with roll calls. A paper system using print outs from the door access system would take far too long. Electronic logging at muster points would only work if people reliably carry their access cards at all times. Is there a need for roll calls at all if FM sweeps are utilised anyway?
If roll calls are not necessary, is there just one massive assembly point or is it better to have smaller ones by department/work area?
Any experiences or reading references would be much appreciated.
Thanks
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Rank: Forum user
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Hello,
At my head office we have around 60 staff , so quite alot less than you will deal with. We have 3 assembly points - 1 for each floor and a fire officer per floor. I print off a list for each floor and pass to fire officers as they are ready to do the roll call and also take out the visitors book.
In general the fire drills run smoothly and take around 2 minutes.
The main problem is like you say ,the print of for the register.
Can you get your I.T department to have seperate lists for different areas?
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Rank: Super forum user
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AKM.
At my last place we did not do a roll call- there were about 250 people at the peak.
We had fire wardens who used the sweep system- the FRS were quite happy for us to do this, as we had a good system in place.
We had three muster points in the car park that was away from the building.
Andy
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Rank: Super forum user 
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There is absolutely no need for a roll call if you have fire wardens conducting a sweep.
One building I have responsibility for has up to 6000 persons inside. It's in an extremely built up area of the city of London with absolutely no space for an assembly point (or series of smaller assembly points).
Instead, upon an evacuation, 99% of staff evacuate and move away from the building randomly and spread out in the locality. Coffee shops and bars do very well indeed during these rare occasions!! A small team of FM and security staff remain to liaise with the fire service and the fire wardens (who sweep their floors and report to the FM manager).
When the all clear is called, staff are contacted to return via a telephone cascade system.
This system is tested by a drill annually & works very well in an environment where a roll call is simply not possible
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Rank: Super forum user
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As others have said, we do a sweep and do not bother with a roll-call. To many people coming and going. How do you keep track of who is on site?
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Rank: Super forum user 
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Agree with above comments
With that many people roll call will just go wrong!
I have seen this happen on a chemical plant during a drill (when I was in charge at bronze) and it was very embarrassing. Made worse as we had made a mistake caused by an error in electronic sign in system - but so did the fire brigade. The refereed to a casualty, ambulance service refereed to a fatality. One person or two, no one knew and it took ages to sort out. If that had been real life the fire teams might have committed to search a building that was empty!
That said - a sweep won't occur properly if there is a fire, so if you can utilise a back up system that would be better.
It all comes down to risk assessment at the end of the day - Messy provides another good example of a difficult situation.
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Rank: Super forum user
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AKM wrote:Hello. My company is going to be consolidating four buildings into one in the next couple of years and I am starting to think about how we deal with an evacuation. There will be 500+ people and the building design does not allow for partial evacuation by zones. I would envisage the use of fire marshals to sweep areas but I'm unsure how to deal with roll calls. A paper system using print outs from the door access system would take far too long. Electronic logging at muster points would only work if people reliably carry their access cards at all times. Is there a need for roll calls at all if FM sweeps are utilised anyway?
If roll calls are not necessary, is there just one massive assembly point or is it better to have smaller ones by department/work area?
Any experiences or reading references would be much appreciated.
Thanks
Hi ya,
If this is a phased in thing over the next few years, you have time to plan this in your own way that suits the buildings needs and area available for assembly points.
I come from construction sector, and the way I do site evacuations is a number of wardens are appointed to help with a sweep, and direct operatives to the assembly point, then the section foremen are to account for their men at assembly point, this works well for us, as the foremen know who is in that (grant this will only work if the evacuation occurs after 07.30 start). Once the drill is done, I will go to the clock cards and confirm if everyone was accounted for.
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Rank: Forum user
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Thank you for your replies - its taken me a while to log back into the site.
I'm currently of the mind to dispense with roll calls altogether (unless I can find some technology that can make them accurate and reliable).
Thanks again
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