• Riki Brown
    10
    Section 14 of the General Risk and Workplace Management Regulations outlines the need to implement an emergency plan. I struggle to see the benefit of a generic emergency plan, the ones I've seen are always so high-view they aren't that useful, e.g. evacuate from the area of the danger, attend to the injured, call emergency services etc. Which if you are creating one over arching 'emergency plan' need to be that general to cover all emergencies.

    Wouldn't more specific plans to deal with the most conceivable emergencies for ones business be a more effective approach to plan for and manage an emergency?

    My heart goes out to all the folks being impacted by cycle Gabrielle x
  • Jane
    92
    Wouldn't the point be to look at your business and think through how you would deal?

    Some ideas from someone who has been living this in the last week... I have no idea if you are rural or city, so take what is useful and leave the rest :) I can only speak to our situation.

    Biggest challenges here have been - lack of coms, lack of usable roads/bridges, lack of power, damage to houses and sections and infrastructure. My town has been super lucky that we have had drinking water and sewerage right through. There is the first day challenge, then as the days go by the challenges change.

    Maybe rename your 'evacuation procedure' to a 'communication procedure' and see if that changes anything.

    1. how do you know everyone is safe when you have no mobile coverage? When celltowers fail, normal coms don't work. It can be days.
    2. how do you deal if there is a slip, road closure, flood waters, bridges out between where your people travel? What do they have in the vehicle that will help them and others near them? eg. First aid kit + training. Does every driver know not to drive in flood waters, and how high is too high etc.
    3. What are the alternate routes and safe spots? What routes would people need to go to get home. Where can people go if they can't go home?
    4. What back up power do you have at the shed? Charged battery packs, maybe alternate simcards. Spare petrol/diesel. Where is your nearest generator if you needed one, and spare cables? Camping stove with gas for hot drinks. Is the shed the best place to keep this (eg. evacuation point) or could you rustle it up from someone's house.
    5. Can you take a laptop somewhere else so you can still deal with admin elsewhere. Is it backed up? Do other people know the passwords to deal with stuff if needed? (a data evacuation procedure lol). Everyone needs to know about whether their pay will go through.
    6. Maybe a facebook messenger group or similar to get messages to and from staff quickly. Send test alerts to make sure all staff can access it. Best coms last week on spark were texts and facebook messenger. Other stuff simply didn't load for days. lets not talk about vodafone.
    7. back up water. if you are rural, you may lose water pumping and clean water. Stash of muesli bars and biscuits that are checked.

    That is all I can think of for now, please excuse the braindump.
  • Stephen Small
    59
    @Jane is this a specific emergency response plan for your business, or have you strayed into a general disaster plan? (i don't know what is relevant for your business either)

    @Riki Brown Section 14 of the Regs is reasonably prescriptive about it being relevant to the nature of your businesses forseeable emergencies that you have control or influence over, especially when read in the context of Sections 13 and 15. Worksafe's website information is very much specific hazard based = flammable materials, hazardous substances, fall from heights, excavations and trenches, risk of drowning, engulfment etc.....

    We are a utility critical infrastructure, so our emergency management plans have to conform to the Civil Defence Emergency Management Act. We have do do all the things and much much more that are listed above.
    Possibly so would essential services like farms, but a non-essentail retail business is likely to shut it's doors and ride out the storm (safer for people to stay at home, if they evacuate they are not coming to work anyway) - remember the questions during Covid levels about who be open and who should close???
  • Jane
    92
    My post makes a whole lot less sense now that the original post has been substantially edited.
  • Aaron Marshall
    118
    Wouldn't more specific plans to deal with the most conceivable emergencies for ones business be a more effective approach to plan for and manage an emergency?Riki Brown

    Yes, focus on what you, as a business, are most likely to face internally. A general disaster response is usually outside the scope of a company's ERP, as Authorities will be giving instructions, individual's priorities are quite rightly with their families and homes rather than work, etc.

    From a safety perspective, you also need to look at returning to work procedures. Have workflows been interrupted at a critical point, and how do you ensure that production is safe? Are your employees mentally able to continue working? etc.
  • Garth Forsberg
    34
    Wouldn't more specific plans to deal with the most conceivable emergencies for ones business be a more effective approach to plan for and manage an emergency?Riki Brown

    I'm breaking our plan into three chunks
    - the emergency response plan dealing with the immediate threat and safety: fire, earthquake, floods, chemical spills, etc.
    - the business continuity plan dealing with keeping the business running short term. Staff communication plan, staff trauma counselling, infrastructure assessment (IT, power, comms, roads, buildings, etc), planning the response
    - the recovery plan - insurance, relocation rebuild or repair options, server and information recovery from backups, staff wellbeing.

    That seems to be working, in that I can do specific plans in the emergency section and more general plans to keep things running.
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