Evacuating the premises safely and effectively is paramount in the event of a fire and the procedure should be familiar to all employees and easily followed by visitors. If you are a UK employer, you must carry out at least one fire evacuation drill and record the results every year. You must keep the results as part of your fire safety and evacuation plan. Stress testing your Fire Emergency Evacuation Plans (FEEPs) is what a fire drill is all about, and the more realistic the test the more authentic the result.
Benfield Fire Safety can organise and run these drills, acting as independent observers and provide you with a debrief, so you can be sure that you have an effective emergency plan in place. Using our state-of-the-art digital fire simulator, smoke machine and rescue mannequin we create a realistic fire emergency in your premises to see how your team reacts under pressure. We video the drill, analyse it and report back to you with an action plan so you can make improvements.
Who is it for?
The evacuation drill should include all employees except those needed to ensure the security of the premises or those who are required to remain with equipment or processes that cannot be closed down. It may also be appropriate to include members of the public. It is best to not inform staff about the drill, as this may not provide a true reflection of their behaviour in an emergency evacuation.
Benefits of using Benfield Fire Safety
We have over 20 years’ experience of running fire evacuation drills, so you can rely on us to give you a candid and detailed evaluation of your performance against your Fire Emergency Evacuation Plans (FEEPs). Our observations will not be coloured by prior knowledge or expectations of your employees. You will get a clear action plan and a video recording – as well as giving you a verbal brief on the day, you will get a full written report and a clear action plan. If you use our cloud-based fire risk assessment software, we will record your fire drill in the log book to reassure local fire and rescue service personnel should they visit.
Preparing for your fire evacuation drill
Working discreetly with you or your responsible person, we plan the simulated emergency to be as realistic as possible. Every fire evacuation drill is unique to your business needs and premises, but would usually involve us setting a ‘fire’ using our digital LED simulator, and using water vapour and artificial smoke to activate your smoke alarm. After that, we work in partnership with you to see how well and how fast your fire wardens act to:
- To test the staff’s knowledge of the current Fire Emergency Evacuation Plan (FEEP).
- Locate and extinguish the fire if safe to do so.
- Evacuate the building.
- Account for staff, occupants, residents, visitors, contractors etc.
- Isolate gas and electricity supplies.
- Gather essential documents as if to brief Fire & Rescue Service.
- Maintaining safe person concept at all times.
- Evaluate the strengths, weaknesses and learning points of the drill.
- Provide strengths/weaknesses/learning points from the drill to management (via this report) for their evaluation of current arrangements to ensure those arrangements are fit for purpose.
We can work with your monitoring station if you have one, and with the local fire and rescue control room, to ensure there is no unnecessary action or alarm as a result of the artificial smoke.
Since our fire evacuation drill service is bespoke we can:
- Recreate real emergencies from your sector
- Take account of people with mobility needs
- Make the drills different each time so your staff members don’t become complacent
- Make the drills more challenging, for example by blocking an emergency exit
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