Where Does WHS Fall Down on Emergency Preparedness?

When it comes to emergency preparedness/management planning, about 70 per cent of organisations take their WHS obligations seriously and actively promote a culture of preparedness within their workplace, according to an expert in the area.

Proper emergency preparedness/management planning includes active participation by building/facilities managers, security managers and supervisors, together with WHS managers in attending warden/chief wardens training, said Jeff Walker, owner of JKG Global Group, which specialises in security and risk consulting, security management and specialised protective security.

These managers should also actively participate in evacuation and lockdown exercises, said Walker, who observed that such managers understand the risks to their sites and organisations.

“These organisations are very proactive in building their response teams,” said Walker, who is one of the co-presenters at an upcoming seminar on emergency preparedness and management planning, to be held on Tuesday 19 November 2019 in Sydney.

“Critical information is easily accessible to their ECO teams,” he said.

“Being pre-emptive ensures that all their emergency evacuation diagrams, and emergency plans are currents and relevant.”

Walker, who has an extensive operational background in counter-terrorism operations and training and served in the Royal Australian Navy and Australian Federal Police for a combined 22 years, said the other 30 per cent of organisations take a baseline approach to emergency management, doing what is required to get by.

“They always question the contents of AS3745 because it is only a guide,” said Walker.

“A minimum number of wardens attend the promulgated training sessions, and emergency manuals and evacuation diagrams are left to be reviewed and updated a couple of years after its due.

“The justifications used are the tenants are always busy, it costs more to provide more training, the managers have more urgent tasks to attend,” he said.

One of the most common issues for organisations in this area is that they rely too much on providers to do the right thing, such as providing the correct risk-based training for their site or building profile, or providing a compliant site-specific emergency plan.

“All this leads to is a compliance statement for the building,” he said.

“They should take a step back and look at the bigger picture – emergency management training is a life skill.”

This ‘baseline’ compliance mindset has got to change, according to Walker, who said it has to shift from being about compliance to exceeding the requirements: “the objective is to implement ‘best practice’ methods and contents,” he said.

Emergency management requires both parties (client and provider) to ensure that the best practice is always adapted, and he said there must be a shift away from the “baseline” compliance mindset.

“When the shift takes place, it is contagious,” he said.

“The training sessions will be more interactive and enjoyable; the tenants will see this as a life skill, not a two-hour boring talk about fire, smoke, and extinguishers.”

Walker also observed that there is a growing trend in the convergence of emergency management with security.

“Fire and smoke will always be a risk, however, the emergence of criminal and terrorist activities will dictate this landscape,” he said.

Training should address the identified risk and threat, and Walker said security risk assessments are essential because of the shift and converging into the security and counter-terrorism sector.

“We must change and adapt to the ever-changing emergency management landscape,” he said.

“Refusing and not doing this may mean that the training will be irrelevant and outdated.”

There are a number of steps organisations can take to help meet these challenges, and Walker said that training and emergency management exercises should be risk-based.

“Training providers should conduct risk assessments for their clients before commencing any training,” he said.

“On completion of that, the training package should be modified to suit the client’s profile.”

There is no one-size-fits-all training package; however, they are common elements that must be identified and addressed in the creation of the training package and the emergency plan.

The most crucial segment is getting a subject matter expert to deliver the training.

“At the present moment, this is not happening. It is only happening for general emergency management training sessions,” he said.

“An expert in this field must deliver specialised topics such as bomb threat management and the active armed offender. Unfortunately, it is not happening.”

Walker will be presenting at an upcoming seminar on emergency preparedness and management planning, to be held on Tuesday 19 November 2019 at 2-24 Rawson Place Haymarket in Sydney. The other presenters include Lynden Moyes (SafeWork NSW, major hazard facilities team on secondment as Fire and Rescue NSW liaison officer) and Michèle Strömquist (state inspector with SafeWork NSW, in the dangerous goods and explosive materials unit). For more information visit the event website, call (03) 8336 1995 or email events@aihs.org.au.

Article originally published by the Australian Institute of Health and Safety.