Posted By Renown II Abs There is nothing to stop you from 'blocking off' this exit for the purpose of a fire drill. (This could be used as the seat of the fire) The aim is to make staff think of where their next nearest safe exit is. During staff fire training, the subject of knowing at least two fire exits should be raised. From what you say, 90% of staff go out the main entrance and this may not be their nearest safe fire exit, but it is the one they use all the time, thus causing the bottleneck.

Posted By Mike Parks Abs I agree with Renown II about 'blocking it off' for fire drills. You do not say however if your main dor is normal swing doors or revovling ones. In the event of a real fire elsewhere in the building, if 90% use the main exit you should look at WHY they are using it and why is there a bottleneck. What sort of door are they trying to get out of. Is it wide enough to use a an emergency escape. Mike

Posted By David Gault The bottle neck you describe sounds much like the incident at the Station nightclub in America a few years ago where about 100 people died. In that case people became wedged in the exits. In order to avoid that happening within a business you can use the fire evacuation to train both employees and your fire marshals. In a real fire people don't panic immediately but when they do a crush can occur. Make sure your fire marshals are trained to guide people out of the nearest exit. They should take control of the situation and not allow the bottle neck. Practice evacuations can help with that. BLocking off an exit in a practice can be a good idea and in fire risk assessments you have to discount your largest exit. However, as I implied above control is essential. Your employees need to be familiar with the exits and the fire maarshals need to be confident enough to guide them out. Imagine the bottle neck you describe in a real fire with smoke and maybe even the lights going out if the power cuts out. I hope that is helpful.

Posted By Abs Malik How does everyone determine how long it should roughly take to evacuate a buildig, is there a formula? Abs

Posted By Decimomal You say a large office but do not say how large. What does your fire risk assessment say,are you the safety peerson, what have the fire marshalls been told? Questions questions........ Review the fire risk assessment Provide information and training Clarify the duties of managers, supervisors and fire marshalls Try to establish why occupants do not evacuate via the emergency exit routes (are they alarmed for example?)

Posted By Abs Malik We have approx 400 people in the office 90% staff and the remainder are customers, visitors and contractors. Our fire risk assessment is suitable for the building, but in reality we all know evacuation drills never go to plan! having signs on doors to say no exit, is probably a good idea.

Posted By Merv Newman I conducted twice-yearly fire drills for almost 20 years (two sites) never had one that went 100% right. Always found some improvements were possible. After the drill we held a meeting with sweeps/managers etc to analyse the results and discuss corrective actions. This meeting was called the "post mortem" Merv

Posted By Fire Fly Abs, you have received a variety of well informed and professional solutions regarding your post.Whatever methods you employ to educate occupants in using alternative egress options, you should consider other life safety emergencies that may require alternative evacuation options, eg bomb threat, chemical spillage, air system contamination etc. If practical, split your floor area in to evacuation zones if you have multiple exit egress options, eg more than 2 points of egress. They could be coloured coded for easy identification on a floor evacuation diagram and have a designated exit point for each evacuation zone. In an evacuation where all exit points from the floor are safe to use it will ease the conjestion away from the 'most favoured exit' Fire Fly,Sydney