NDA and IOSH Safe Egress for All Conference
The National Disability Authority and IOSH recently held a conference entitled Safe Egress for All. Some of the main findings emerging from the conference included the importance of:
- Updating and improving your health and safety egress plan on a regular basis and ensuring testing of your egress plan take place on a regular basis.
- Moving from generic egress plans towards developing site specific evacuation policies and procedures in consultation with staff and testing of same.
- The role of the client in liaising with the designer at initial stage of the design brief to ensure safe egress issues are considered and designed in from early on.
- Evacuation lifts – Numerous discussions took place in relation to the installation of evacuation lifts. One of the main conclusions was that the designer and client must ensure safe evacuation can be achieved throughout the building and this needs to be planned for early in the design stage of developments. The installation of Evacuation lifts is one part of this strategy. It was noted that the International Standardisation Organisation are currently developing standards in this area.
