All organizations are responsible for protecting the health and safety of their employees. This is why it is necessary to have a current Emergency Operations Plan (EOP) in place.
An EOP, sometimes referred to as an EAP or ERP, is a carefully developed plan designed to comply with applicable government regulations and standards for responding to emergency situations. Its purpose is to inform and guide all employees in effectively preventing, preparing for, responding to, mitigating, and recovering from any incident or emergency possible in their work environment. There are three key features that make an EOP effective.
1. SCOPE
The primary goal of any EOP is always to prevent incidents before they happen. However, if an incident does occur, then personnel within your organization must be prepared to respond safely and effectively. Other important goals the ERP should address are to establish and maintain the procedures, plans, resources, and roles that will:
- Prepare for and respond to emergencies
- Reduce or remove the effects of emergency incidents and prevent exposures from turning into larger emergency incidents
- Activate, mobilize, and coordinate all necessary resources and activities to manage the emergency’s immediate consequences
- Restore the affected area back to pre-incident or better condition and learn from the event.
2. OBJECTIVES
To accomplish these goals, the EOP implementation must meet the following objectives:
- Complete hazard identification and consequence analysis to develop specific emergency procedures and plans
- Train all personnel who may be involved in a response
- Maintain competent and sufficient resources and service providers
- Complete emergency exercises at regularly scheduled intervals to test the plan and procedures
- Transition from the emergency phase to the recovery phase to ensure that sites are remediated
- Consult, communicate with, and inform the public and other external agencies, as appropriate, of the procedures, plans, and training materials to educate and prepare those who may be involved in or affected by an emergency
- Develop, implement, establish, and report on controls to prevent, manage, and mitigate conditions during an emergency
- Regularly evaluate and continually improve incident management, compliance with regulatory requirements, and community relations plans and protocols
- Communicate lessons learned from exercises and events as part of the continuous improvement of the EOP
3. COVERAGE
An EOP cannot be generic; there is not a one-size fits all. Every business, facility, field-site, and organization should have an Emergency Operations Plan tailored to its unique physical and operational design. All personnel affected by an EOP must be trained in that EOP’s procedures and how to react to any emergency situation including site-specific details that are unique to a facility and situation.
An effective EOP is developed and implemented to ensure that all personnel can respond to emergency situations in a consistent, methodical, and organized manner for the protection of employees, visitors, contractors, and anyone else in the organization.
SPARK THOUGHT can help your organization develop functional EOPs and implement them. We help through several related services including Regulatory Compliance services to ensure current compliance, Technical Documentation services to create and update EOP and related documentation and Learning Solutions to streamline and differentiate your compliance training process. We listen. We collaborate and innovate. We deliver customized Knowledge Management Solutions.