Review, coordinate, and update the plan

Once you have completed your emergency action plan, review it carefully with your employees and post it in an area where all employees will have access to it.

Make sure to review with each employee upon initial assignment those parts of the EAP and Fire Prevention Plan (FPP) that the employee must know to protect him or herself in the event of an emergency. Remember, the EAP and FPP go hand in hand. You may want to combine the two plans into one document.

The written plans must be available to the employees and kept at the workplace. For employers with 10 or fewer employees, the plans may be communicated orally.

Coordinating with other organizations

Your EAP should be reviewed with other companies or employee groups in your building to ensure that your efforts will be coordinated with theirs, enhancing the effectiveness of your plan.

In addition, if you rely on assistance from local emergency responders such as the fire department, local HAZMAT teams, or other outside responders, you may find it useful to review and coordinate your emergency plans with these organizations. This ensures that you are aware of the capabilities of these outside responders and that they know what you expect of them.

Coordinate practice with other organizations

It is a good idea to hold practice evacuation drills in coordination with other organizations. Working with emergency responders, other building occupants, and community organizations help their employees to become familiar with your emergency procedures, egress routes, and assembly locations, so that if an actual emergency should occur, they will respond properly.

Don't forget to include outside resources, such as fire and police departments, when possible. After each drill, gather management and employees to evaluate the effectiveness of the drill. Identify the strengths and weaknesses of your plan and work to improve it.

Update the EAP regularly

Operations and personnel change frequently, and an outdated plan will be of little value or use in an emergency. You should review and evaluate the effectiveness the contents of your plan regularly. Update the EAP whenever:

• employee emergency actions or responsibilities change,
• when there is a change in the layout or design of the facility, new equipment, hazardous materials,
• processes are introduced that affect evacuation routes
• new types of hazards are introduced that require special actions.

The most common outdated item in plans is the facility and agency contact information. Consider placing this important information on a separate page in the front of the plan so that it can be readily updated. Here's a sample EAP Audit Checklist you can use to help design your own review process.

REVIEW QUIZ

This is an open book review quiz. It's important to complete this quiz as some of the final exam questions are derived directly from the questions within this module quiz. Immediately after submitting the quiz, you will receive a web page containing your answers and the correct "book" answers.