Document {{ORG_PREFIX}}-020

Emergency Preparedness & Response Plan

1. Purpose

This plan exists so that when something goes suddenly and seriously wrong — in the office or on a field site — everyone knows what to do, in what order, without having to work it out under stress. The plan is a controlled IMS document: the drill-and-revise cycle in Section 7 keeps it current, and the records in docs/records/emergency-drills/ are the evidence that this upkeep really happens.

Because this is a worker-facing OH&S document, it is consulted with workers via the {{ROLE_WORKER_REP}} before approval, evidenced in docs/records/consultation/.

2. Scope

All workplaces under {{ORG_NAME}}'s control: the office and every field context where its people work. {{ORG_NAME}} works out what could go suddenly and seriously wrong at each workplace through the hazard process (Risk, Opportunity & Hazard Methodology) and assesses the OH&S risks of each scenario there; this plan covers that list:

• Office: fire, medical emergency, security incident, building evacuation.
• Field: [ORG-DECISION: the organisation's real field emergency types — e.g. medical emergency in a remote area, vehicle incident on unsealed access, severe weather while on site, lost communications with a lone worker, client-site evacuation, encounter with hazardous materials].

Emergencies at client-controlled sites follow the client's site emergency plan first; this plan governs {{ORG_NAME}}'s own people, their accounting, and escalation in parallel. Where an event is or becomes an incident, the Incident Reporting & Investigation Procedure takes over once people are safe.

3. Activation Criteria

This plan activates on any situation presenting an immediate threat to life, health, property, or the environment at a workplace under {{ORG_NAME}}'s control — including field sites — that cannot be resolved by the people present through normal controls (matching activation_trigger in the frontmatter). Any worker may activate this plan. No one needs permission to call emergency services, evacuate, or stop work in the face of danger. The Emergency Controller role coordinates from activation onward.

4. Roles and Responsibilities

Role	Responsibility	Backup role
Emergency Controller ({{ROLE_OHS_COORDINATOR}})	Coordinates the response, decides escalation, liaises with emergency services, stands the plan down	{{ROLE_TOP_MANAGEMENT}}
First Aid Officer ([ORG-DECISION: nominated trained roles])	Immediate first aid; decides medical escalation	Any current first-aid-trained worker
{{ROLE_TOP_MANAGEMENT}}	External communications (clients, regulator, families); resources for the response	{{ROLE_QUALITY_MANAGER}}
Field team leads	Account for their team, execute the field response steps, communicate status to the Emergency Controller	Second field team member
All workers	Follow the response steps, report status, participate in drills	—

Do not hardcode personal phone numbers or personal emails here — reference the People register / site emergency contact list, which can be kept current without editing a git-committed, versioned document.

5. Response Procedure

1. Protect life first — remove yourself and others from immediate danger. No deliverable, instrument, or vehicle outranks a person.
2. Call emergency services where there is any threat to life or health — directly, before internal notification.
3. Give first aid within the responder's training.
4. Notify the Emergency Controller (or backup) — who activates the plan formally and starts an event log (time, decisions, actions).
5. Account for everyone at the affected workplace — office muster point [ORG-DECISION: location] or field check-in via the lone/remote-work communication schedule.
6. Contain what can safely be contained — only within competence and without new exposure.
7. Escalate and communicate per Section 6.
8. Stand down only on the Emergency Controller's decision; then hand over to the Incident Reporting & Investigation Procedure (including regulator notification and scene preservation where the event is notifiable).

6. Communication

Who must be told, in what order:

1. Emergency services — first, by whoever is present.
2. Internally — Emergency Controller → {{ROLE_TOP_MANAGEMENT}} → affected workers and their {{ROLE_WORKER_REP}}. Every worker learns their emergency duties and this plan's contents through induction and the training items in Section 7 — communication of duties is not left to the day of the event.
3. Contractors and visitors — anyone at the affected workplace is included in the response and accounted for; contractors working for {{ORG_NAME}} receive the relevant parts of this plan before field work (per the Procurement & Contractor Management Procedure).
4. Clients — where the emergency touches a client site or engagement: {{ROLE_TOP_MANAGEMENT}}.
5. Regulators — jurisdiction-specific notification duties are [ORG-DECISION: confirm the notification obligations for the org's jurisdictions from the Compliance Obligations register] — never invented.
6. Community/neighbours — where an event could affect people in the vicinity of a workplace, the Emergency Controller communicates as appropriate to the situation.

The notification order above only works if the arrangements behind it are already in place. {{ORG_NAME}} sets them in advance, and the drills in Section 7 exercise them:

• Lone and remote workers check in on the lone/remote-work communication schedule. A missed check-in counts as a possible emergency: the field team lead attempts contact straight away and activates this plan if contact is not made within the no-contact window that schedule sets.
• Emergency services reach each workplace on the details held in the site emergency contact list referenced in Section 4: the address, how to get through gates or locked access, and where someone waits to meet the responding crew. Whoever calls gives those details, and the Emergency Controller sends someone to the waiting point where it is safe to do so.
• Client sites run on the client's emergency plan first (Section 2), while the {{ORG_NAME}} field team lead accounts for {{ORG_NAME}}'s own people and reports status to the Emergency Controller. {{ORG_NAME}} gets the site rules and the access arrangements from the client before work starts.
• Visitors and contractors stay with the worker hosting them, who walks them to the muster or check-in point and reports them accounted for. Contractors receive the relevant parts of this plan before field work, and {{ORG_NAME}} reconciles their own emergency arrangements with these ones at that point.

Each arrangement above answers the same question, which {{ORG_NAME}} asks when it chooses which emergency scenarios to plan for and again when it designs each drill: who would an emergency put at or near this workplace, what can each of them actually do when it happens, and what will they need to do it. The groups above are the ones that recur; anyone else an emergency could touch is worked through the same way and gets the same kind of arrangement, well before any activation. The answers come from the parties themselves: workers answer through the {{ROLE_WORKER_REP}} and the drill debriefs in Section 7, and clients, contractors and emergency services answer when {{ORG_NAME}} confirms site rules, access and briefings with them.

7. Drills, Testing and Review

Summary only — actual drill/test records live in docs/records/ (emergency-drills/) and the corresponding Schedule register rows.

• Training: emergency prevention, preparedness, and response training, including first aid for the nominated roles, runs as Training Curriculum items per the Competence, Training & Awareness Procedure and is evidenced in the Training Log.
• The plan is exercised on a set cadence: [ORG-DECISION: set the drill cadence; the default is an office evacuation drill each year plus one field-scenario exercise each year, rotating through the field emergency types]. Drills sit in the Schedule register (Category: Drill), and every drill ends in a worker debrief: drills are consultation touchpoints.
• After every drill and every real activation: the Emergency Controller judges what worked and what did not, and puts any change to this plan through the PR lifecycle. Real activations get the closest look.
• Most recent exercise: last_tested_date (see frontmatter) — null until this plan has genuinely been exercised once; the full record lives in docs/records/emergency-drills/.

8. Related Documents

• incident-reporting-investigation-procedure — takes over after stand-down; notifiable-event duties.
• risk-opportunity-hazard-methodology — how potential emergencies are identified and their OH&S risks assessed.
• communication-consultation-participation-procedure — the consultation mechanisms drills and debriefs run through.
• competence-training-awareness-procedure — the training machinery for emergency competence.

9. Revision History

Version	Date	Author	Description of Changes	Reviewed By	Review Date	Approved By	Approval Date
0.1	2026-07-16	{{ROLE_OHS_COORDINATOR}}	Initial draft	—	—	—	—

10. Document Control

Document	{{ORG_PREFIX}}-020
Type	Plan
Version	0.1
Status	Draft
Owner	{{ROLE_OHS_COORDINATOR}}
Reviewer	{{ROLE_WORKER_REP}}
Approver	{{ROLE_TOP_MANAGEMENT}}
Next Review	2026-08-15
Classification	Internal

Held in the document frontmatter, mirrored to the Document Register.