Sustainability & Risk/ Emergency Preparedness

Emergency Preparedness: Application Overview

With the Sustainability & Risk domain's Emergency Preparedness application, you can prepare your facility and your FM staff to respond to and manage all types of emergencies, from a non-life threatening flood in your data center, to a potentially more serious event such as a chemical spill in a biotechnology lab.

Use the Emergency Preparedness application to record, access, and update the critical facility information that you need in the event of an emergency. The Emergency Preparedness application can help ensure that you have the information you need at your fingertips, and the ability to communicate this information during a workplace emergency.

The sequence below outlines how to use the application. Note that for the drawing components of the application (drawing egress plans, hazardous material plans, and various facility zones), you use the Smart Client's drawing tasks, as outlined below. Also, for defining your systems and their dependencies you can use either the Smart Client or Web Central tasks; the tasks are offered in both environments.

In the event of an emergency, remote access to your facility data is particularly handy because you may not be able enter the building during the emergency to access your database. Sites, therefore, often mirror their facilities databases and Web server at a remote location. This ensures that if your primary database and Web server are disabled during an emergency, your staff, as well as emergency first responders, will still be able to remotely access and update data using the Web.

Plan for an Emergency

The business process owner and emergency preparedness manager develop the following data so that it is available should an emergency occur.

1. Define basic information about your facility.

• Defining Geographic Locations
• Defining Locations
• Defining Organizations
• Defining Companies

2. Develop emergency contact information for employees and key vendors.

• Defining an Emergency Contacts List
• Entering Employee Emergency Contact Information

3. For each division, create a recovery team list and an escalation contact list.
   During an emergency, recovery team members verify the safety of employees and also may be responsible for getting a division back in operation. Recovery team members can use an escalation contact list – a listing of employees who have authority in an emergency to expedite decisions and purchases for each recovery team -- to quickly approve decisions and purchases necessary for returning the division to an operational mode.

• Defining an Escalation Contacts List
• Creating a Recovery Team List

4. Define facility systems and dependent systems. (This can also be developed by Archibus Smart Client users.)

• Recording Critical System Information

5. The CAD user works with the Smart Client Extension for AutoCAD to add egress plans, hazardous material zone, sprinkler zones, and so forth to floor plan drawings. Knowing the location of these areas on a floor is vital to responding to and containing an emergency. Supply this information to first responders and the emergency response team so that it is available in the event of an emergency.

• Draw egress plans
• Draw hazardous material (HAZMAT) plans
• Draw your building's zones, including sprinkler, security, emergency, and HVAC.

Respond to an Emergency

In the event of an emergency, both internal employees and first responders can access facility information in order to respond to the emergency, update the status of employees and facilities, and prepare to continue operations once the situation is contained.

Step 1: First responders respond to the emergency.

Firefighters, police, and others responding to an emergency are often provided with a URL of the corporate intranet so that they can sign into the system and access egress plans, room plans, hazardous material plans, sprinkler zones, and so forth. Knowing the locations of these areas on the floor plan are vital to responding to the emergency and ensuring safety.

If necessary, your site's emergency response team works with the first responders to ensure employee safety and inform emergency contacts of the situation at hand by providing them with the following reports:

• View Egress and Occupancy Plans
• View Employees by Room
• Locate Staff Member

Step 2: Recovery teams keep staff informed and begin recovery preparations.

Your site will have designated staff to be on recovery teams, which prepare to resume operations after the emergency has been contained. Once the emergency is contained, recovery team members typically:

• create advisory bulletins
• update employee status
• begin work on resuming operations, working with an escalation contact list if necessary.

In the event of a building emergency, general staff may be instructed to not report to work. Staff members can access the corporate intranet from home and then review advisory bulletins about the current building situation.

Step 3: Assessment teams assess the situation and the usability of assets.

Once an emergency is contained and safety is guaranteed, sites need to resume business operations as quickly as possible. They may need to move to a contingency location or operate with limited equipment and employees. The first step in getting started with preparing to resume operations is to assess the situation and determine the usability of assets.

The assessment team typically travels throughout the facility to assess the condition of rooms, equipment, and systems. They can note if these items are usable, temporarily unavailable, or non-recoverable.

• Updating System, Room, and Equipment Status
• Updating Facility Status by Using Zone Drawings

Step 4: Managers prepare to resume business.

With the information provided by the assessment team, managers make decisions required for resuming operations. prioritizing purchases, and eventually returning to normal operations.

Managers also:

• Create advisory bulletins for staff and review manager-specific advisory bulletins.
• Manage the document library