Boosting Emergency Preparedness at Industrial Facilities

To establish an effective emergency plan, you must first gain a thorough understanding of the different types of emergencies that may arise. One of the best ways to grasp different types of emergencies that can impact industrial facilities is to conduct a three-stage risk assessment:

Now that you’ve assessed all the potential hazards facing your facility, it’s time to create a response plan for each one.

When creating a response plan—also known as an emergency action plan—you will need to decide which of the following actions are appropriate for each type of hazard:

While these three types of responses form the core of an emergency plan, there are additional aspects of adequate planning that need to be considered:

An additional step safety leaders of industrial facilities can take is to send the emergency preparedness plans to local emergency services such as the police and fire departments. Sharing these emergency plans can help safety officials be better prepared to assist your facility in the event of an emergency. The reality is first responders won’t be familiar with the unique safety aspects of your facility unless you provide them with the necessary information in advance. This advanced preparedness can save valuable time if an emergency should arise.

With a comprehensive emergency preparedness plan in place, you are ready to start communicating this plan to your organization and training key members of your staff. Each team member involved in ensuring the safety of your facility should thoroughly understand their assigned role in each emergency response scenario.

As a starting point, you should make these emergency plans easily accessible to relevant members of your safety team. It’s not enough to just email the plans to these team members. You must post the plans throughout your workplaces and store them on a company network that can be quickly accessed at a moment’s notice. Moreover, it’s critical that you clearly identify where emergency equipment is located throughout your facility. Examples of this equipment can include fire extinguishers, AEDs, and more.

Knowledge is indeed powerful and making sure your employees understand the safety plans is a great start. However, this doesn’t go far enough when it comes to responding to emergencies. The leaders and employees at your facilities must also practice these emergency response plans regularly. This means your team conducts routine simulations and testing of equipment to make sure the plans are effective and that your leaders will know what to do if a crisis occurs. Moreover, these practice exercises are a great way to work out any kinks that you may not have realized were present in your emergency procedures.

The LobbyFox manufacturing visitor management system is a powerfully automated safety tool when it comes to managing emergencies effectively. With LobbyFox, you can easily keep track of every visitor that is inside your facility. Our easy industrial lobby kiosk makes visitor check-in at your facilities convenient and secure. When emergencies occur, you immediately have an updated list of the visitors who are at your facilities in real-time. Moreover, because LobbyFox is cloud-based, your list of onsite visitors is accessible to your kiosk admins right from their smartphones. In the event of an emergency the kiosk allows you to text all onsite visitor’s and employees instructions on what to do or where to go through premade emergency templates.. When first responders arrive you will be able to tell them exactly how many visitors were in the facility thanks to the LobbyFox visitor management system.