This is part III of a 3-part series where we explore today’s challenges in emergency evacuation and the opportunities for improvement offered by new innovations in safety technologies.
Regardless of whether it is due to fault or misfortune, when a disaster occurs, it is imperative for a company to assume the responsibility of ensuring the safety and well-being of all individuals on its premises and prevent any further harm. Typically, this is where the evacuation component of the overall emergency strategy comes into action.
As shown in previous parts of this series, evacuation is a complex affair that’s too often underestimated. Sometimes with dramatic results.
A strong general safety culture obviously provides a solid, much needed foundation. And today a growing number of companies builds upon that foundation by adopting new smart solutions in safety technology. For prevention as well as response.
Emergency evacuations: summarizing the challenges:
- Is there a clear and well-communicated chain of command for emergency response and evacuation coordination?
- Is everyone included in the emergency communication? Think outside contractors, visitors, weekend-shift employees, … .
- How adequate are your mustering zones during actual emergencies?
- How efficient and error free is your headcount-system? And can you account for missing persons?
- Emergencies don’t play by the rules, how fast can you adapt to a dynamic situation?
- Is your evacuation plan up to date?
- Drills can make your productivity take a hit. How do you minimize the time lost?
- And: is your evacuation management as good as it can be today? Do you take advantage of the benefits new safety technology solutions offer in answering a significant number of the questions above.
A new breed of evacuation management
Rombit, a pioneering innovator with a proven track record in worker safety technology, recognizes the significance of evacuation management as an essential component of any comprehensive safety strategy.
By seamlessly integrating user-friendly premium smart badges with a flexible software platform, Rombit offers a comprehensive solution that is both easily implementable and minimally disruptive to operations and budgetary constraints.
In essence, this solution empowers safety managers with invaluable real-time capabilities to promptly alert, locate, and identify all individuals present on-site.
Moreover, the features of this solution provide a clear and effective response to the numerous questions raised above, as well as to the most common (deadly) mistakes as presented in Part I of this series.
Solution features
- Worker evacuation alarm
Sends an individual evacuation alert to all or groups of people wearing a smart badge onsite in case of an emergency situation, wherever they are. This eliminates environmental or personal physical barriers and guarantees that everyone gets notified.
It also allows targeting specific areas/departments/groups for more efficient and less time wasting drills. A clear ROI benefit.
- Real-time worker localization
Real-time location tracking of all workers during the entire time of the evacuation, both outdoor and indoor, accounting for every safe, onsite or missing individual.
- Hazard zones
Protects your workers by geofencing no-go zones to keep them away from hazard areas during an incident or dangerous activities. This also significantly lowers the need for emergency wardens to communicate potential changes in safe or danger zones.
- Smart mustering
Automatic activation of preconfigured geofence muster zones for workers to safely gather during the evacuation. Is a specific muster zone no longer considered safe, this can be communicated directly to all evacuees.
- Evacuee headcount
Accurate and real-time reporting on and identification of workers and visitors. Those safely located within the muster zones, as well as those still in the field.
- Check-in
Individual evacuee feedback requests made by HSEQ, the control room or the medical services to check if the missing worker is OK. Or to communicate their whereabouts to emergency services when he/she’s not, not responding or the smart badge shows no-motion.
Alerting and accounting for all onsite personnel in a timely manner during an emergency situation can literally make the difference between life and death. By implementing a smart evacuation management system like Rombit’s you are taking the next step in safeguarding your workforce and preventing an already severe situation from getting a lot worse.
In Part I we summed up the seven most common mistakes in emergency evacuations. Part II takes a look at how new technologies can over all impact emergency evacuation efficiency.
