The actions taken within the first 5 minutes of an emergency can largely dictate the severity of consequences. In this case, “severity of consequences” can involve catastrophic financial, environmental or material damage, and/or major loss of life.
Employees need a plan of action to count on when emergencies strike in order to minimize damages.
An emergency response plan is a manual that companies use to address many different types of emergencies.
The manuals include:
The priorities for any ERP are, in this order:
ERPs should address only the highest-risk situations. They are critical for a high-quality, timely risk management response. You might call an “emergency response plan” a “catastrophic situation plan.”
Emergency response plans must be organized from the beginning. During an emergency or even when you are conducting emergency drills, there is little time to waste. Timely responses remain critical, as your actions will be reviewed later by hyper-critical stakeholders.
When considering the organization of an ERP, I prefer to follow the advice from an ERP expert, Gordon Dupont of System Safety in Vancouver, British Columbia. Gordon suggests organizing the ERP logically into chapters and subchapters. Each chapter will categorize a particular type of emergency, such as:
Within each chapter of the ERP, there may be several subchapters, each of which will cover either:
For example, you might have a chapter for a Bomb Threat, with subchapters for various actions required in response to this threat. Or, you might have a chapter for a Bomb threat with subchapters for various types of bomb threats based on:
You will choose which type of ERP manual structure most closely aligns with your company's objectives. As you create or review your ERP documentation, consider which risk controls are currently implemented to mitigate the identified risk scenarios. When you identify shortcomings, enter each newly identified hazard into the hazard register and conduct a risk analysis. Whenever risk is unacceptable, additional control measures should be designed into the "system."
As said, emergency response plans need to include who to contact, how to act, and resources to use. In more detail, this means that each chapter should:
This “manual” can be
As discussed, the emergency response plan provides guidance for the critical actions needed in the initial minutes of an emergency. More subtly, ERPs are so important because:
With an ERP, your organization will be substantially better prepared for professionally managing high-risk hazards as they arise. An ERP is a proactive risk management strategy used to minimize both operational and financial risk. The way a company handles an emergency will also affect the public's sentiment toward the company. In short, an ERP serves as an insurance policy for the company's reputation.
The first thing you need to do before developing an emergency response plan is conduct risk assessments on identified risks in order to establish potential emergencies. You are looking for risks that:
There may be high-severity risks that are not known in the industry, and you can choose to include these in your ERP. However, you should be wary of including “too much” in your plan, as it can quickly become bloated.
As you identify and create a list of potential emergencies, organize them into logical categories. These logical categories will be your ERP chapters. Next, you need to actually create:
Developing these items might be best managed by processing each chapter as a safety issue. This will ensure that your ERP is:
After chapters have been processed, you should have a complete response plan for emergencies. As new emergencies are identified, you can update your ERP.
Emergency response plan in hand, you will need to get it into the hands of your employees. ERP documentation should be made very accessible because, after all, how useful is an emergency response plan if nobody can access it?
So, the first step is to:
Beyond that, you should:
ERPs should be tested with emergency drills. Emergency drills allow you to ensure that your organization responds to emergencies as planned. You can then make notes, and process any needed changes as safety issues. An ERP without corresponding emergency drills is like flying an aircraft without checking the engine first.
Having an ERP generation tool in your aviation SMS database is a huge bonus. The benefit is that your ERP will be easily accessible to all employees and that employees can keep their contact information current. One of the major challenges of traditional ERPs that are stored as hard copies is that they quickly become outdated as employees rotate in and out of the company and as employees' contact information changes.
A low-cost, commercially available SMS database offers additional advantages beyond managing ERP documentation. Learn how your company can benefit from a well-known aviation SMS database by watching these short demo videos:
Last updated June 2024.