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 Shelter
in Place and Emergency
Systems Audit
Case Study: The John Lewis Partnership
In 2005/6 JLP moved Partners from other buildings in London into its
refurbished HQ in Victoria including some into new accommodation in an
adjacent building.
The Partnership recognised that with a higher population and new
Partners who were unfamiliar with their surroundings they would need
to revamp their emergency procedures and training. The refurbishment
also offered the opportunity to make any changes to the building
necessary to support the upgraded procedures. JLP asked Evacuation
Strategies to help develop its internal shelter strategy and make their
existing emergency procedures more effective.
The Solution
Evacuation Strategies applied its
 Emergency
System
Audit approach where all aspects of the ‘system’ needed to make
evacuation or shelter procedures work are examined to ensure they are
individually robust and work together, and are best practice.
For JLP one activity was to analyse the complex building layout and
population density at different times of the day. The results identified
ways to reduce evacuation time, and a better understanding of how
shelter needed to work in practice.
A thorough audit of the evacuation routes, signage, command and
control communications was completed to help identify ways to reduce
evacuation times, including evacuation when only some exits were
available.
Other elements of the work included interviews with key personnel and
observations of desktop exercise and evacuation drills.
Benefits
As a result of the Evacuation Strategies work JLP has:
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Reduced evacuation time from 8 minutes to 6 minutes
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Developed plans to upgrade its public address and communications
infrastructure
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Introduced regular measurement and control
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Revamped buildings signage
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Significantly enhanced the training for partners
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Upgraded all aspects of their crisis procedures.
“We treat our emergency performance as an essential activity of the
business. Evacuation Strategies, through analysis and detailed audit of
our plans and implementation have made a dramatic difference to our
performance in evacuation, and have ensured that we have robust plans
for any eventuality”
Pat Dixon, Head of Facilities Management.
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