Exit routes, also known as evacuation plans or means of egress, are the paths your employees can take to exit your facility in the event of an emergency. These exit routes must be properly designed, implemented, distributed, and maintained. If they aren’t, your company is in violation of OSHA Standards and your employees are at risk.

There are 2 primary standards which relate to exit routes – Standard 1910.36 and Standard 1910.37. Standard 1910.36 mainly focuses on creating an evacuation plan, including how many exits and how many different routes to the exits must be available. Standard 1910.37 focuses on exit route maintenance.

Standard 1910.36 needs to be a consideration from the beginning as you create your evacuation plan. It sets the guidelines not only for the flow of the routes and the number of required routes and exits, but also for the construction of the routes and exits. This includes the materials used, the size of the openings, the types of doors at the openings, and how these routes and exits must be accessed.

Standard 1910.37, meanwhile, must be a long term consideration as you maintain your facility. This standard tells you what safety features, signage, and lighting are required for the many different types of exit routes available. If you have not recently reviewed your exit routes to ensure they are up to code with this standard, it might be a good time to schedule a third party safety audit – in the event of an emergency, it is important to be sure your employees can evacuate your facility safely and effectively.

Should you have any questions about establishing or maintaining your exit routes, please contact us. And if you have anything else to add about exit routes, please leave a  comment.

Emergency action plans are important for businesses of all sizes. They help to ensure that all employees are safe and accounted for in an emergency situation, and can help with business continuity after an emergency. And while it is important for every employer to have an emergency action plan in place for these reasons, it is also important to know that it is an OSHA requirement. OSHA regulates emergency action plans with Standard 1910.38.

Standard 1910.38 basically dictates that an emergency action plan must be in place, must be available to employees in writing, and must have specific procedures in place for the handling of emergency situations. These plans must include how to evacuate, how to notify the proper authorities, how to account for personnel after evacuation, and how to account for anyone who will remain in the building.

But beyond the basic details, it is important to remember the purpose of the emergency action plan. It is not a document that should be written up and forgotten about; emergency action plans can and do save lives. If a fire breaks out in a plant, this document has the predetermined steps to get employees out safely. And when you look at the recent disasters in Colorado and New Jersey, it is clear that these types of disasters can and do happen.

If you have any questions about how to establish an emergency action plan, or how to properly distribute it and train your employees on it, please contact us. If you have anything you would like to add about emergency action plans, please leave a comment.

An evacuation plan is nothing more than a document which shows where a staff member should go in the event of an emergency to most efficiently exit the building. It is no more than that. It might include shelters, zones, back up routes, or color coding, but at its core, any evacuation plan should focus on an employee’s ability to leave the facility. Now, you can add zones, shelters, back up routes, and color coding to an evacuation plan to make it easier for employees to leave the building in an emergency situation, and we would recommend that you do that, but do not let these additions detract from the point of the plan – helping employees to safely and quickly exit the building.

To help employers stay on track and create an efficient evacuation plan, OSHA created Standard 1910.36, which gives specific guidelines pertaining to the creation and dissemination of evacuation plans at work. And while there are a number of specific guidelines set for just about every circumstance imaginable, what is most important to remember is that every company needs to create an evacuation plan for every facility.

We have had clients with small facilities in the past who, when asked for their evacuation plan, laughed and said they did not have one because their facility was so small. Unfortunately, common sense is not an acceptable evacuation plan, even if you only have two rooms and one door to the outside. If you do not have a viable evacuation plan, or have not reviewed it recently, create a good plan which fits OSHA’s requirements.

If you have any questions about how to create an evacuation plan, where to post it in your facility, or how to handle a specific issue with your plan, please contact us. If you have anything to add about evacuation plans, leave a comment.

Emergency action plans should be incorporated into any work facility, be it a small retail space, a large warehouse, or an office in a skyscraper. This is not only because OSHA requires it, but because these plans are directly responsible for saving lives in the event of a serious emergency. If an emergency incident should occur, a well developed plan to evacuate, ensure employee safety, coordinate with local first responders, and account for employee whereabouts is of the utmost importance.

To help guide employers, OSHA created Standard 1910.38, which guides emergency action plans. This standard requires an emergency action plan be created, and available in writing for any company with more than 10 employees. In addition, an emergency action plan must include procedures for reporting a fire, procedures for an evacuation, procedures for any employees who remain after the evacuation for critical plant operations, procedures to account for employees after the evacuation, procedures for employees performing rescue or medical duties, and the name of every employee who may be contacted by employees who need more information about the emergency action plan.

Further, there are specific requirements for an employee alarm system, employee training, and dissemination of the emergency action plan. In addition, emergency action plans can ensure business continuity. Companies with a well designed emergency action plan are more likely to return to normal business operation, faster.

If you have any questions about how to establish a compliant emergency action plan which takes business continuity into account, please contact us. Should you have anything to add about the importance of an emergency action plan, please leave a comment.

OSHA takes evacuation very seriously. In the event of a true emergency, the only thing which may be able to protect life and prevent serious injury is a well designed, clearly labeled,  and properly maintained evacuation route. And as the standards were being formed, OSHA ultimately created two separate standards for evacuation – 1910.36, which covers the construction of the exits and routes, and 1910.37, which describes how the routes need to be maintained, what safeguards need to be in place, and how to handle changes to the original evacuation route.

Standard 1910.36 can be seen as the planning and building standard for means of egress. This standard dictates how to create an evacuation plan, how many exits must be available, and how many possible routes must be available from any given location in your facility. Further, it sets regulations on how these paths must be built, and how the exits must be constructed. This includes the size of the openings, the types of openings, the materials used, and the accessibility.

Standard 1910.37 can be seen as the post-construction standard for evacuation routes. Once you have created your evacuation plan and constructed all of your paths and exits to code, 1910.37 will guide you on how to maintain these routes. This includes the safety features required for various pathways and exits, the lighting which is necessary, the signage, and the fact that the routes and exits must be left unobstructed.

If you have not recently reviewed your evacuation route, it is important to do so. And if you have any questions about your specific situation, please contact us so that we can guide you through these standards and explain how they pertain to your unique facility. If you have anything else to say about means of egress, please leave a comment.