Posted By Jennifer Kelly Following a pre annouced fire drill practice at one of our buildings today a fierce debate has ensued as to the nature of future fire drills. I personally believe that on the whole fire drills should be NOT be pre annouced so as to test the system under pressure. Others believe that the drills should be annouced so that if ever the alarm does go off without warning all occupants of the building will know it is 'for real' and not just for practice and so be even more swift in making their exit from the building. What do the forum members think?

Posted By J Knight Do a mix of both, John

Posted By Jerry Lucey If it is a first Fire Drill I usually carry out a briefing session in advance to ensure that all personnel are aware of the evacuation procedure and that such an exercise can be used as a training exercise, to get people comfortable with evacuation routes etc, in a no-panic environment. In such circumstances I would also invite as much feedback as possible which is useful for reviewing/ updating your procedure. Once the Evacuation procedure has been tested and is working I would conduct drills which are unannounced to measure the normal response of personnel. In some cases it may be a good idea to inform Department Managers or Department Heads in order that sensitive times can be avoided e.g. important meetings, visits by potential clients/ customers. The policy should be that 'every' alarm activation is treated as a real/ live emergency. Hope this helps Jennifer.

Posted By TBC Great responses - Only thing to add is ensure a de-brief of Fire Marshalls and security (if you have them) and congrats if they have done a good job.

Posted By Jerry Lucey In the past I have had the issue of an injury occuring often gets raised with regards to evacuation. It is my understanding that the employer will only be held liable for what is reasonably forseeable. There is a body of case law to support this. It is reasonably forseeable that an employee might panic during an emergency evacuation possibly leading to an injury and the employer should therefore risk assess this possibility and implement measures accordingly. Measures I have implemented in the past include; 1/. Induction training and training at regular intervals thereafter took place to ensure that personnel were aware and comfortable with the emergency evacuation routes. 2/. Prior to a planned evacuation a select group were aware of the fact that the evacuation was to take place and a short period beforehand the emergency routes were walked by these individuals to ensure that routes were free from obstruction, adequately lit and that emergency doors were capable of being opened. 3/. Where a route was 'blocked off' a Fire Marshall was stationed at this route to direct personnel to another escape route. This may be acceptable if your evacuation procedure makes provision for a Fire Marshall to carry out this duty in a real emergency, provided there was no additional risk to the Fire Marshall in question. I feel that the element of surprise or unfamiliar circumstances must where possible be avoided during an evacuation. In other words it is reasonably foreseeable that an individual may panic or be injured during an evacuation but by assessing the risks and implementing measures to lower the risk to a level 'as low as is reasonably practicable' the employer is acting as a reasonable employer should, which is all that is expected. Twice yearly evacuations are a legislative requirement so the employer does not have a choice as to whether or not they carry out these exercises. Hope this goes some way to making the situation clearer.