Chapter 2.3 - Emergency preparedness and response

 On this page

• Incident response and emergency management
• Fire evacuation drills
• First aid

The arrangements for incident reporting, investigation and management, first aid and fire can be found on the Safety Services website.

Safety Services is a professional support service, which provides competent safety advice and practical tools to enable UCL to meet its core objectives in research, teaching and engagement. Our processes follow international standards and best practices.

Incident response and emergency preparedness

The UCL Resilience Framework is being applied across all Faculties and Departments to align and standardise the approach to incident response, incident management, business continuity and contingency planning.  

UCL Sustainability has a proactive Business Continuity Management Advisor to facilitate the development, review and exercising of plans. 

Departments are responsible for:

• Ensuring the development and annual review of Response and Contingency Plans (RCP)
• Ensuring their staff are aware of the RCP and its content
• Exercising the RCP or elements within it, to ensure it is fit for purpose

Response and Contingency Plan Template

The Resilience intranet (UCL login required) includes information on how to develop a Response and Contingency Plan (RCP) and conduct a Business Impact Analysis (BIA) and includes user-friendly templates. 

The RCP template consists of two parts.

• Part 1 contains incident response and escalation guidance, a 24/7 emergency contact list for Security, IT and UCL Communications, a draft meeting agenda, guidance on stakeholder engagement and welfare and a hyperlinked decision/actions log. There are some tables to populate with your departmental contact numbers and other business-relevant details
• Part 2 records your highest risk business-critical activities and recovery time objectives to support decision-making when prioritising business delivery due to an incident or other interruption

To capture business-critical activity data a ‘Business Impact Analysis lite’ (BIA) template is populated, which identifies the components, time criticality and vulnerabilities of business delivery dependency. This process identifies areas where contingencies should be considered to improve business resilience.

Fire evacuation drills

Fire evacuation drills for UCL buildings will be conducted annually and may be unannounced.

Fire drills serve a legal compliance function, although offer additional opportunities for advancing fire safety standards.

First aid

Safety Services is responsible for assessing and identifying the type of first aiders required in each UCL building.

Departments undertaking specific activities or with specialist areas such as fieldwork or dealing with the public will be responsible for reviewing and assessing their first aid needs to ensure that the existing level of first aid cover is appropriate and adequate for the level of risk in the work areas.

UCL manages the provision of first aid through three first aid roles.

• Appointed Person (First Aid) - no formal training
• First Aid at Work course (FAW) - three-day training course
• Emergency First Aid at Work course (EFAW) - one-day training course

For regulatory purposes, the EFAW certificate holder can act as a first aider in the workplace but not the Appointed Person (First Aid), whose role is to take charge when someone falls ill or is injured and call the emergency services if required but not attempt to give first aid for which they are not trained.

The UCL Appointed Person (First Aid) can provide emergency cover, within their role and competence, where a first aider is absent due to unforeseen circumstances.

Both the UCL First Aid at Work (FAW) and the Emergency First Aid at Work (EFAW) certificates are valid for three years.

All qualified First Aiders are expected to maintain their first aid certifications by attending the appropriate first aid training. They are strongly advised to attend annual refresher training during their three-year FAW/ EFAW certification period to help maintain their basic skills and keep up to date with any changes to first-aid procedures.

> Guidance on UCL arrangements for the provision of first aid