Emergency Management

If security is one side of the coin, then safety is the other side. The terms ‘security incident’ and ‘emergency event’ are frequently interchangeable. Indeed, there are instances where a ‘security incident’ and an ‘emergency event’ are one and the same. Active armed offender incidents, bomb threats, and other situations where the threat source arises from an intentional malicious human action all fall into this category. Consequently, in addition to addressing the accidental emergency events (fire, electrical hazards, etc), there also needs to be a level of synergy between the organisation’s security and emergency management planning to ensure the necessary level of interconnectedness and integration exists.

The emergency management cycle (prevention, preparedness, response, and recovery) not only looks at measures for preventing and responding to emergency events but it also looks to the building of ‘organisational resilience’. This is essential for an organisation to ‘bounce back’ following an emergency in the workplace and requires a linkage between the organisational emergency management plan and response procedures and the entity’s business continuity plan.

Ultimately, organisational security, safety and resilience should not be viewed in isolation but rather as processes that are interconnected and integrated into the organisation’s core business and day-to-day activities.

Our approach to emergency management is to not simply meet the emergency planning requirements of work health and safety legislation and the provisions of AS 3745-2010 Planning for emergencies in facilities but to encapsulate a holistic approach that acknowledges the symbiotic relationship between security, safety and resilience.