Evacuation Plan

Evacuation plan: a definition

Evacuation Plan (خطة الإخلاء) is a document an establishment draws up before any emergency occurs, setting out how the people in a building leave for a safe place during a fire, a gas leak or another threat: who announces the evacuation, which exit each department uses, where the assembly point is, and who confirms that everyone has left.

The term describes a management practice, not the name of a statutory text. The definition sets out no requirement of any official body in the Kingdom, and it does not decide what a particular establishment is obliged to do.

Which sources did we check?

We verified the bibliographic data of the articles listed in Crossref, which establishes that they exist and confirms their details, not their content. We dropped hyphens from the titles we cite, and we left out an identifier that contains one.

• Proulx. The article “How to initiate evacuation movement in public buildings” in Facilities, volume 17, issues 9 and 10, 1999, pages 331 to 335, identifier 10.1108/02632779910278764.
• Gershon, Qureshi, Rubin and Raveis. The article “Factors Associated with High Rise Evacuation: Qualitative Results from the World Trade Center Evacuation Study” in Prehospital and Disaster Medicine, volume 22, issue 3, 2007, pages 165 to 173, identifier 10.1017/s1049023x0000460x.
• Gershon, Magda, Riley and Sherman. The article “The World Trade Center evacuation study: Factors associated with initiation and length of time for evacuation” in Fire and Materials, volume 36, issues 5 and 6, 2012, pages 481 to 500, identifier 10.1002/fam.1080.
• Fahy, Proulx and Aiman. The article “Panic or not in fire: Clarifying the misconception” in Fire and Materials, volume 36, issues 5 and 6, 2012, pages 328 to 338, identifier 10.1002/fam.1083.
• Drury, Cocking and Reicher. The article “Everyone for themselves? A comparative study of crowd solidarity among emergency survivors” in the British Journal of Social Psychology, volume 48, issue 3, 2009, pages 487 to 506, identifier 10.1348/014466608×357893.
• Gwynne, Kuligowski and others. The article “Enhancing egress drills: Preparation and assessment of evacuee performance” in Fire and Materials, volume 43, issue 6, 2019, pages 613 to 631, identifier 10.1002/fam.2448, first published online in 2017.
• Kinateder, Kuligowski, Reneke and Peacock. The article “Risk perception in fire evacuation behavior revisited: definitions, related concepts, and empirical evidence” in Fire Science Reviews, volume 4, issue 1, 2015.

We read the abstracts of these articles as Crossref and OpenAlex publish them, and we read the full text of none of them. We did not use consulting company pages as a source for any effect or benefit.

What goes into an evacuation plan in practice?

From our sources we know of no agreed list of elements. The list that comes next is our own compilation, gathering what the abstracts we read refer to repeatedly:

• Alarm and the call to evacuate. How the people inside learn that they must leave, and who holds the decision to announce it.
• Routes and exits. A main exit and an alternative for each department, with signs pointing to both.
• Assembly point. A fixed place outside the building, away from the entrances and from the routes ambulances take.
• Roles. A warden for each floor or department, and someone who checks the toilets and meeting rooms.
• Headcount. A list of the people present, against which arrivals at the assembly point are matched.
• People who need help. Who assists a person with a disability, an injured colleague or a visitor who does not know the building.
• Return to the building. Who decides that the danger has passed.

The abstract of the 2007 study by Gershon and colleagues supports part of the list. It reports that evacuation at the organisational level was affected by workplace preparedness planning, including the training and education of building occupants, and by the way they were told about the risk. The abstract of Proulx (1999) holds building managers responsible for drawing up a fire safety plan, for training staff well, and for effective communication among them that gives the public information prompting a quick and safe evacuation.

Why are people slow to start evacuating?

The Proulx abstract starts from an observation that it says research and experience both point to: occupants of large public buildings tend to ignore a fire alarm and carry on with what they were doing. It then discusses other ways of alerting them, and recommends a communication system that gives them accurate information about what is happening.

The abstract of the 2012 study by Gershon and colleagues points the same way. The study analysed survey data from a sample of 1444 people who evacuated the two World Trade Center towers on 11 September 2001, and examined what sped up or slowed down the start and the completion of their evacuation. At the individual level the abstract lists health condition, sensory cues, risk perception, delaying behaviours, and going along with a group or a leader who emerges on the spot. At the building level it lists obstructed exit routes, poor signage, crowding and failed communication systems. The abstract states that several of these factors can be modified.

Risk perception is reviewed in the 2015 study by Kinateder and colleagues, whose abstract defines it as an individual’s sense that the risk of an ongoing event, such as an active fire, concerns them personally. The abstract adds that emotions shape this perception and that cognitive biases make it prone to error. In our estimate this explains why hearing the alarm is not enough: the plan has to name who turns the alarm into a clear instruction to leave.

Do people panic during an evacuation?

The abstract of the article by Fahy, Proulx and Aiman (2012) says the word “panic” recurs in the media and in survivors’ accounts, but the data the article presents, drawn from interviews and case studies of actual fires, indicate that panic is very rare in fires. The term nonetheless remains in use among the public and among fire experts too, so the article calls for dispelling the misconception that panic is a key element of fire.

The 2009 study by Drury, Cocking and Reicher approaches the question from another angle. According to its abstract, it analysed interviews with 21 survivors of 11 emergencies and tested two hypotheses: that a shared identity among members of a crowd in an emergency increases solidarity and reduces “panic” behaviour, and that this identity may arise from the shared experience of the emergency itself. The abstract states that the analysis broadly supports both hypotheses. What that implies for the plan is our reading: it is better built on the assumption that people cooperate and need clear information, not that they will rush out mindlessly.

What do evacuation drills reveal, and where do they fall short?

An evacuation drill is a planned simulation in which employees leave the building as though the emergency were real, so that the plan is tested on the ground. The abstract of the article by Gwynne and colleagues says the benefits of drills are not well understood, that their effect on egress performance is not precisely described, and that the way they are run varies between regulatory bodies and within a single one. The same abstract stresses that the article does not claim drills are unimportant, only that the inconsistent way they are used and their results interpreted might deny those involved their full benefit.

We think the value of a drill lies in what gets recorded afterwards, not in completing it. A locked exit that a drill uncovers before any fire is an observed hazard to be reported and fixed, and it is not recorded under Near Miss, a category for events that actually happened at work and caused no harm. We suggest assigning the running of evacuation drills and the updating of the evacuation plan to the Health and Safety Officer, defined in the glossary as the person an establishment assigns to carry out its duties to prevent workplace hazards and to follow them up.

A worked hypothetical example: an evacuation drill in an office of 120 employees

Suppose a hypothetical office on three floors whose attendance register lists 120 employees on the day of the drill. The alarm sounds at 10:00, and 5 minutes later the floor wardens take the first headcount at the assembly point and find 110 employees. Another 6 arrive by minute 8, among them two employees who were in a meeting room where the alarm could not be heard.

Four names on the register remain unaccounted for. Checking them by phone takes a further 7 minutes, and it turns out their owners are on leave that was never recorded. The number actually present is therefore 116, which is 120 minus 4. The share of them counted at the first headcount is 110 ÷ 116 = about 94.8%. The wardens declare everyone out of the building only after 15 minutes, the sum of 8 and 7. Of that time, 7 ÷ 15 = about 46.7% went on reconciling an inaccurate register, not on walking out.

The hypothetical drill yields two findings: a meeting room the alarm does not reach, and a leave record that lags behind reality. All the figures are hypothetical, chosen to show the method of calculation, and they represent no establishment and no study.

How does an evacuation plan differ from similar concepts?

• Emergency plan. Broader than evacuation. An emergency is sometimes met with a partial evacuation or by sheltering in a protected place, so the evacuation plan is part of the response, not all of it. This division is our own, and it agrees with what the abstract of Gershon and colleagues (2007) reports: full evacuation of high rise towers is highly unusual, because their fire safety procedures normally provide only for limited evacuation in small and medium fires.
• Business continuity plan. The documented strategy that defines how a company will keep operating during and after a disruption is known as a Business Continuity Plan, and its concern is keeping operations going. An evacuation plan is concerned with the first minutes and with people’s safety.
• Occupational health and safety. The duties placed on the employer and the worker to protect the worker from the hazards of work and from the diseases arising from it are the subject of Occupational Health and Safety, and we state none of its rules.
• Safety culture. An evacuation plan is a document, and whether people treat that document seriously on an ordinary day belongs to Safety Culture, the values, attitudes and practices that an organisation and its members share towards risk.

Where does HR fit into an evacuation plan?

Decisions on exits, alarms and means of protection rest with the specialists in them. What lies in HR’s hands shows in the hypothetical example: the headcount depends on an accurate attendance and leave record, on knowing who needs help to get out, and on every new employee being shown their exit and assembly point.

A new employee’s first week is a chance to walk them through the exit routes and the assembly point as part of Employee Onboarding, described in the glossary as the organised process that carries a new hire from accepting the offer to working at full productivity. Reviewing the findings of each evacuation drill is a task suited to a Safety Committee, a standing internal body that monitors how duties to prevent work hazards are applied and reviews accidents and near misses. These are our suggestions, not a procedure taken from a source.

What does the evidence permit us to conclude?

We do not conclude that having an evacuation plan shortens the time to get out by a known amount. The Gwynne abstract describes the effect of drills on egress performance as not precisely described, the two Gershon studies concern a single event in two particular buildings, and the Drury study rests on interviews with 21 survivors. We found no Saudi study in our sources that we could rely on, so we do not describe the state of establishments in the Kingdom.

The question any evacuation plan puts to the test stays simple: if the alarm sounded now, would every person in the building know where to exit and where to stand, and would anyone know for certain who is still inside? The answer to the second half depends on an accurate register of who is present before it depends on walking speed.

This is an explanation of the concept, not legal advice.