Unless you have a reliable, resilient and robust system for accounting for staff and visitors, its very unlikely that your employer’s management of fire safety would be deemed compliant.
Whether you use a sweep or roll call, it has to work 101% of the time, and that is really difficult to achieve without some effort and cost.
A roll call system is largely ineffective unless everyone books in and out every time they leave the building, even if they are retrieving something from their car , having a smoke or popping over the road to buy a sandwich
Using electronic systems can work, but not always. My Head Office is in a city centre. Everyone (except visitors) carries a proximity card but there is no outside space to locate readers and with thousand of staff leaving a dozen exits along a 900m building perimeter, there would need to be numerous mobile/hand held reader points taken to RVPs which is getting complicated
The sweep method works well. We use a process where each floor is divided into sections and in an emergency, trained fire wardens proceed to a central point on each floor. They select their chosen sweep zone (A, B or C etc). Two wardens sweep each zone following a predetermined route shown on a plan, then leave the to report to a Fire Coordinator who had already set up their RVP in the street a couple of hundred of metres away
The Coordinator uses a checklist to tick off the areas that are confirmed cleared as wardens arrive, and constantly updates the Building Manager who is still at the site (and liaising with the fire service) by phone.
It is not a quick system as its a big building with an occupancy of circa 5000. Being a city centre, the fire service will arrive perhaps 10 to 15 minutes before we can account for all persons. We have liaised with them and they are happy
It is not cheap. We maintain 200 fire wardens and around 10 coordinators. In a given 12 month period, staff leave, move floor, get pregnant and generally make managing the distribution and availability of wardens a huge logistical challenge. Plus they all need training annually (so more than one course per month) which creates more administration and expense.
Covid has further complicated matters. Less staff, longer working days due to spilt shifts and more 24/7 working has meant we can only aim at a ‘best endeavours’ approach. Training by Teams rather than face to face, and a changed procedure where staff are encouraged to look out for others as they evacuate have been introduced