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Emergencies occur every day. The specter of terrorism and workplace violence — coupled with age-old threats such as fire, earthquake, hurricane, flood, and other natural, manmade, or technological disasters — mean the dangers facing employees, facilities, and operations are, perhaps, greater than they have ever been.
To mitigate these threats, companies must be able to detect threats and determine effective protective actions making best use of internal resources, as well as external emergency services.
Emergency response is the collective action taken at a site to stabilize an incident that has the potential to injure people, damage property, interrupt business operations, or contaminate the environment. Emergency response planning is the development and implementation of policies, procedures, and organized team(s) designed to stabilize the effects of an incident.
Sole dependence upon public emergency services is not sufficient. Outsiders don’t know as much about your facility as you do, and therefore cannot respond as effectively or as efficiently. Disasters overtax public services, delaying their response or limiting their availability. In addition, there is a tangled web of local, state, and federal regulations mandating emergency planning or dictating staffing, equipment, training, and documentation requirements.
What Will You Say When They Ask What Happened?
Failure to develop and maintain adequate emergency response plans can result in regulatory fines and penalties as well as civil liability for damage to property and injuries to occupants and the surrounding community. Even more importantly, failure to adequately prepare for an emergency can prove crippling, if not fatal, to your organization. Faced with this, senior management should be asking questions around issues such as:
- Are our emergency response plans compliant with applicable regulations — including local, state, federal, Occupational Safety and Health Administration, or Environmental Protection Agency as well as nationally recognized best practices?
- Have we trained all employees as required by law and have we exercised our emergency response to assess our capability to respond to credible threats?
- Are our emergency response plans site specific and coordinated with the public emergency agencies that would respond to the site?
- Have our emergency response plans been updated to reflect changes in personnel, facilities, operations, and internal or external capabilities?
Who's Looking Out for You?
Marsh’s Emergency Response Planning practice is staffed with professionals who help our clients develop a capability to respond effectively to whatever peril threatens people, property, operations, or the environment. Our consultants are experienced with all major industries and their unique perils. Many of them are involved in the design and development of standards for disaster and emergency management. This knowledge enables us to stay at the forefront of a rapidly evolving field where new codes, standards, and best practices are published almost daily.
The goal of an emergency response planning is to develop a capability that will enable effective decision-making and execution of protection strategies for whatever situation unfolds. Together we will help you determine the most appropriate level of response to emergencies based on your needs and regulatory requirements.
Marsh follows a standardized process when developing site-specific capabilities for handling emergencies, which begins with our ERP preparedness assessment. The methodology includes:
- Identifying and assessing the impact of perils that threaten the safety of employees and business operations — and recommending strategies to mitigate exposure
- Determining the appropriate level of response – commensurate with the potential consequences of credible threats, the availability and capabilities of internal and external resources, and regulatory requirements
- Organizing teams to respond to credible threats
- Developing threat and building-specific procedures
- Coordinating with public emergency services
- Training personnel
- Exercising plans
If you have any questions or would like additional information, please contact us.
Kroll, a subsidiary of Marsh & McLennan Companies, offers services that complement Risk Consulting's. Learn about Kroll's
crisis and emergency management capabilities.
If you are seeking information about insurance and related services, please visit marsh.com.
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