An evacuation plan is only an aspiration until it has been rehearsed and tested. It might work well on a sunny lunchtime, but nobody wants to discover in a real incident that it holds up less well on a wet day in November, when people are frightened, the power has gone and the roll-call point is outdoors. Even a drilled plan can come unpicked the first time it is genuinely stress-tested.
We build and run exercises to develop, test and rehearse emergency evacuation plans. The basic plan comes first: routes, roles, muster points, and the decisions someone has to make in the first two minutes. Then we test it, through drills and through tabletop exercises that walk the team past the parts a drill cannot safely stage, such as a blocked stairwell, a failed alarm, or a floor that cannot be cleared before the Fire and Rescue Service arrives. For buildings where a full exit is not realistic, such as hospitals and care settings, we plan and test progressive horizontal evacuation.
Good emergency planning is far more than writing a plan and walking it through once. It needs staff who have practised it, know their part, and understand the decisions they may have to make to keep everyone safe. We train them to that point.