Having an emergency preparedness plan will help facility managers navigate through countless natural and man-made disasters. Unfortunately, most action plans are probably doing things wrong.

In this quick video, Bo Mitchell, President of 911 Consulting, explains why your current document is inefficient and what facility managers need to do to be better prepared for emergency situations.

Here’s a preview:

Now do you have an emergency action plan? Well before you say, “duh, of course I do,” please remember that OSHA is not a town in Wisconsin. OSHA defines what an emergency action plan is and OSHA requires that every employer in the United States of America has one.

I don't care what your business model is. If you have one person or a thousand, or one million people in your facility, you're required by federal law to have an emergency action plan. So says 29 cfr 1910.34 which requires that you shall have an emergency action plan and you shall have a fire prevention plan. This is above and beyond whatever your state or city might require.

So suddenly we're back now to a lot of people looking over our shoulder as we return to work. This is complicated stuff. What is supposed to be in our emergency action plan — because I told you, don't say that you have one, until you know exactly what is constituted and what is a legal definition of an emergency action plan — well the place we go to and any court in the country will go to (and trust me, I've been there as an expert witness), they will go to something called NFPA 1600.

The NFPA is the National Fire Protection Association, which has over the last 125 years written standards. Standards that are used under NFPA standards in every one of your fire codes, city and state nationwide. In fact, most of your fire codes are made up by references to NFPA standards of which there are 300 standards covering everything, including sprinklers. You name it, they've covered it as far as workplace safety is concerned.

NFPA 1600 says you shall have a plan and it can shall conform with our standard NFPA 1600. What it means is this is no longer your father's fire plan. It isn't just about fire. This is the table of contents that NFPA 1600 requires of you now. You can say, “well gee, isn't this over the top Bo?” Well no, it isn't because these are all foreseeable circumstances. They’ve already happened and that's where they're going with this thing. As these things happen, then you're supposed to plan and train your employees to respond to all of these.