We (Ministry of Justice) recently conducted a trial evacuation of the Christchurch Justice and Emergency Service Precinct and were provided with the attached regulatory amendment by FENZ. It temporarily suspends the need for building owners to conduct 6-monthly trial evacuations while the Epidenic Preparedness (COVID-19) Notice 2020 is in place (Due to expire on 24 September unless an earlier date stated by the PM).
I don't recall having received an update to say that this amendment had been made until this time and wondered if anyone else had been made aware of this. If so, what channel did you receive that update through so I can revise my contacts to keep in the loop.
Attachment
FENZ (COVID-19 - Fire Safety Evactuation Procedures and Evacuation Schemes) Amendment Regulations 2020(426K)
Thanks Ross - I had no idea this was in place and we're linked into various channels, including directly to the MBIE and all of government response to the pandemic.
Yes, we were aware of this back in April. This was because we were due a trial evacuation and wanted to find out if we still needed to do them. We were not notified but found it on the FENZ website.
We had no information regarding this. Hospice has recently changed our evacuation system (local Fire Service aware) we were instructed by them to conduct our drills, which they attended. Interesting thanks for the information.
Well I wish I had known about this as I had a H & S audit two months ago and got pinged because we didn't do our timed evacuation trial in March as required (We did it once we were back to Level 2).