Safety Knights

Will production allow this???

Yes, I had a DO that wanted the fire drills unannounced. Thats how we found out our fire alarm system was inadequate and got the upgrade finally. Facility ran around the clock with about 115 people fully staffed. Use to be a warehouse, you couldn't hear the alarm in 75% of the building.

Yep even in manufacturing, unannounced drills are our standard. We factor in production ahead of time by telling a few folks in advance at the manager level (for example, Mixing, which could mess up a batch in case we do a drill in the middle of it) so that they can plan their day's work around the drill. So operators will be doing cleaning or other tasks (paperwork) for example, so that production-critical tasks are not impacted.

It's been fantastic to get feedback from employees about their own confusion or lack of clarity.

Most of my drills I've done in the past are unannounced. There are obviously some exceptions, such as active shooter, but unannounced drills test the TRUE preparedness when an incident occurs.

When it comes to spill response (especially facilities covered by EPA's FRP/ERAP requirements), there are a mixture of announced vs. unannounced, with the biggest being the Government-Initiated Unannounced Exercise (GIUE) by the EPA where they may show up every 3 years to conduct an exercise. Related to spill response, the triennial FRP exercise, annual accountability/evacuation drills, annual incident management team exercises, annual emergency procedures exercise, and semi-annual spill response equipment deployment exercises are all unannounced.

Outside of spill response, severe weather drills are unannounced. We will, however, announce and plan for annual confined space and high-angle (working from heights) rescue drills. If we're doing a tabletop exercise, then we'll announce it as well so that we have full participation.

The key thing is to document them and critique them honestly (even if it's not a drill). Document everything from the time the drill started and ended to how long it took to complete, any issues, etc. It's best to have multiple people helping monitor the drills (which is a great job for the safety committee), which gives you more "eyes" to see all aspects of the drills. Afterwards, combine everyone's reports and review the findings with management, then do a "hot wash" (debriefing) with your employees so they know what went well and where they can improve.

We do tons of drills!

Some are full-scale act it out drills, some are table tops, and some are in between. Almost all of them are unannounced. We drill on spills (both internal and external with patients arriving at our ED), radiological disasters, and other internal and external emergencies. Table tops are designed to keep our incident command structure fresh, and sometimes there is an active part tied to them. Usually it's a matter of "in this moment in real life, here are our resources, here's the hypothetical incident..." and go from there. They'll make calls, mock moving patients around to free up beds, and go through the first couple of hours of an emergency.

For the full-scale drills, we do it full scale. We don't usually move patients, for obvious reasons, but we'll move empty beds and still do a handoff to test resources. We'll throw in curveballs like an elevator failure, or other random things.

A few years ago, we did a drill where a tour bus from Quebec was involved in a crash with a truck carrying methylene chloride. We actually rounded up some French speaking people and got our translators involved in the drill. The ED only knew it was a bus crash until the first patients arrived. None of the "patients" were allowed to speak English, so the ED folks had to triage and prioritize for the translators as well. It ended up being a very good drill because last year there was an actual bus crash (no chemicals thankfully) involving mostly Spanish speakers and we'd made a few changes based on that drill that came in handy for the real event.

I sort of did it ONE TIME! In the Corporate World we use to have to do annual Business Continuation Drills and report out results to Corporate. We usually tried to run the exercise along with either our annual plant Fire Drill or Weather Evacuation Drill. One year we were extremely busy with production. We had been working round the clock and weekends for months. Everyone was getting tired and "irritated" as the summer waned and no one had much time off! Our Fire Drill was past due and the Corporate mandated Business Continuation was coming up. In a Staff Meeting I brought up the required drills! Manufacturing had a fit about shutting the entire plant down and the resulting downtime. After heated debate we agreed to again postpone the Fire Drill and only have the Continuation Drill with management personnel only allowing the employees to continue to work. We decided not to inform the hourly employees!
So one day we ran the drill with just the managers and supervisors. We had to ensure we could maintain the needs of the customers and maintain the business in an Emergency. Our plant is very near an airport so the scenario was that a plane landed short on our roof causing a major fire and chemical spill. So we ran the drill. One of our supervisors who was a minor actor decided to play like he had broke his leg during the drill and fell to the floor acting like he was in great pain. An employee asked him what was wrong and he mentioned something about "Fire Drill" but the employee only heard "Fire". She yells "Fire" and runs! Several employees called 911 as they had been taught!
So I am in the Parking Lot and all of sudden most of the Cities fire units come rolling into the our lot, along with several police cars, and ambulances! The Fire Chief whom I know, runs to me and yells, "Where is the fire Fitz!" About that time all the employees come out of the plant and the Fire Alarm is sounding. I look dumbfounded and say, "We were just running a small low-k

For Un announced drills, it is really important to plan.

After running a training program for over 400 people, the planning that goes into any type of training, drill or exercise requires a significant amount of planning and coordination.

Outliers will get you every time. The one that calls 911 for real, or pulls the fire alarm pull station and dumps the whole building instead of just the shop you are trying to run the drill in. :D

Always plan for those and make those calls to local emergency resources before you conduct a drill. especially if it is one of those types that would warrant a call to emergency services.

Of course there are always exceptions to everything but a poorly executed drill can have lasting effects. be sure your people are trained on what you want them to know, turnover is hard on a lot of companies and information doesn't always get passed down the way it should. If you have a team to evaluate, ensure they are all on the same page with the same instructions and directions with a way to communicate with each other. Start the drill at the time set. don't go early or late, it opens doors for those outliers to sneak in there.
I have done drills and exercises for many scenarios involving, multi agency, multi jurisdictions with live people playing roles and even transporting patients via helicopter to another state for medical treatment. It doesn't take much for one to go sideways. quality over quantity is a good rule of thumb.

Crawl , Walk, Run when planning drills and exercises.