Emergency Management Planning – Considerations when reviewing your environment

Emergency management planning helps identify the risks and outlines mitigation strategies to protect facilities, business and people. It covers continuity and recovery planning to help you prepare for any emergency.

The commencement of any planning process begins with an understanding of the environment. A simple model used to define the ‘environment’ focuses on three components; Human, Physical, and Technological.

Human Environment

The analysis of the human environment involves reviewing all human traffic in and out of a given facility. Permanent, contract and/or visitors must be considered. Are their peak periods of traffic in and out of the facility?

Physical Environment

The physical environment includes reviewing both interior and exterior elements of a facility. The environment also needs to be monitored both during the day and evening. Some consideration points –

• Your location – is your facility in a regional or metro area?
• Perimeter Security – is there any perimeter security measures in place?
• Entry points – how do people access the facility? Is there vehicle access? What access control procedures are in place?
• Lock up procedures – What are the requirements for locking up the building? How quickly can this be executed?
• Alarm and surveillance systems – What systems are in place? Examples include fire alarms, CCTV and signage.
• Lighting – is the building well-lit in the evenings?
• Are there safe or lockdown rooms?
• Door barricading systems – if your building was to go into lockdown, how would the occupants barricade the entry points/secure their location?

Technological Environment

The newest challenge to the emergency management community is the threat posed by the technological environment. Traditionally, the complexity of the technological environment has meant analysis has been completed almost exclusively by IT departments. However, with an increase in volume and level of risk posed to a facility and business, it now needs to be a concern for all who are involved in reviewing and implementing an emergency preparedness plan.

If a cyber-attack were to take place at your facility what procedures are in place to respond to such a threat?

Security Risk Assessments

Security Risk Assessments will identify deficiencies in the security and emergency preparedness plan. First 5 Minutes’ Risk Assessments are completed by experienced risk assessors who will investigate and review current processes, procedures and protocols along with probable threats and possible future threats to the facility.

Risk Assessments should be independent with recommendations encompassing both security solutions and emergency training solutions. Our Risk Assessments provide a detailed report including risk mitigation strategies to diminish the risk profile. Assessments are in accordance with Australia’s Strategy for Protecting Crowded Places from Terrorism (ANZCTC 2017), National Counter-Terrorism Plan 2017, ISO 31000 Risk Management Guidelines 2018 and HB167:2006 Security Risk Management.

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