How can Emergency Management plans and procedures be effectively evaluated?

Emergency Management plans and procedures can be effectively evaluated through regular drills and simulations, post-incident debriefings, analysis of real-world incidents, stakeholder feedback, and continuous reviews to identify areas for improvement and ensure readiness.

It is useful to set pre-determined frequencies for evaluations based on the following: Complexity of the plan Perceived risk Competence levels of the operators Likelihood of the event occurring Practicalities of performing the evaluation (affect on operations if conducting a tactical exercise as part of the evaluation for example) Ensure all relevant agencies are involved both in the planning and execution of the evaluation.

Evaluate Emergency Management plans through exercises, AARs, tabletop exercises, simulation software, peer reviews, scenario analysis, performance metrics, stakeholder feedback, regulatory compliance checks, documentation reviews, training evaluations, and periodic risk assessments.

A key factor at this stage is to ensure that those responsible for conducting the evaluation are competent to do so and fully understand the purpose of the task. It is also good practice to include independent assessors. From experience, the UK FRS went through a phase of self-assessment where adjacent services would assess one another - in effect “marking their own homework” this was unreliable and problematic. For higher and more complex risk evaluations, formalised standards should be set to which the plan and operations can be evaluated. A good example of this are the standards set in the chemical industry which have been in place for many years now.

One of the challenges attached to the implementation is whether or not the standards and protocols are actually valid. Considering rapidly evolving technology such as Battery Energy Storage Systems (BESS) existing protocols can very quickly become outdated. For this reason a robust quality assurance methodology must also be applied to the standards and protocols to which the evaluation is conducted and measured against.

The reports should also be readily accessible (where permissible) to the target audience and key stakeholders. Those responsible for reviewing such reports should be monitored to ensure confirmation of their awareness, knowledge and understanding. Again, experience shows that this is not always the case: incidents such as the Grenfell Tower fire and failings in the UK’s emergency response to the Covid pandemic where predictable and in some specific cases, were known challenges prior to the events occurring.

A formalised inspection programme via a Governing body would assist in achieving the implementation of findings. Historically in the UK, HSE improvement notices placed upon the UK FRS have not been followed or implemented in a timely manner. Evidence exists (e.g., high rise residential incidents) where multiple fatality events and near misses have occurred due to non-compliance after improvements have been reported and diseminated. There needs to be enhanced accountability for those responsible for implementing and managing these changes.