Trial evacuation is a way to protect the facility against fire hazard. It is nothing more than exercises carried out at certain intervals that allow you to practice and improve the procedure for leaving the workplace in the event of a fire or other emergency.

Regulations contained in the regulation of the Minister of the Interior and Administration on fire protection of buildings, other construction facilities and areas define the rules for evacuation. According to them, appropriate evacuation conditions should be provided from every place in the facility intended for people to stay, enabling quick and safe leaving of the zone at risk or covered by fire, adapted to the number and fitness of people staying in the facility as well as its functions, construction and dimensions. In addition, you should:

• provide an adequate number of emergency exits of appropriate height and width;
• maintain the permissible length, height and width of passages and evacuation accesses;
• provide fire-safe housing and separation of escape routes and rooms;
• protect the evacuation routes listed in the technical and construction regulations against smoke, by using smoke prevention devices or devices and other technical and construction solutions ensuring smoke removal;
• provide emergency evacuation and backup lighting in rooms and on escape routes;
• ensure the possibility of broadcasting warning signals and voice messages through the sound warning system in buildings for which it is required.

Each owner or manager of a facility intended for more than 50 people who are its permanent users, which has not been classified as single-family and multi-family residential buildings, should carry out a practical check of the organization and evacuation conditions from the entire facility at least once every 2 years, i.e. a trial evacuation.

When it comes to conducting trial evacuations for employers, the most important thing is to ensure that employees are properly trained in workplace health and safety.

Employers must also appoint evacuation coordinators at the workplace. The provisions of the Labor Code do not specify what number of coordinators should be appointed by the employer, but it should be adapted to the way the company operates. It is advisable that a properly trained person stays on each shift, and in the case of larger companies even several trained people.

In addition, it is also important to ensure that escape routes in the workplace are marked and that fire routes are not blocked in any way.

Cyclical tests imitating the state of emergency are to verify the operation of the applicable procedures and their assimilation by employees.

The coordinator appointed by the employer must be familiar with the rules of the trial evacuation. he must:

• learn where evacuation routes lead and know how to guide employees through them;
• know the hazards that may occur in the workplace or building;
• know the personnel of the crew;
• know the operation of basic fire protection equipment and their location in the workplace;
• recalculate employees after or during evacuation;
• know what to do after evacuating employees;
• know how to put out fires and know when to give up taking independent actions in this regard;
• know the assembly point;
• know who to inform about the threat.

Employers should be aware that the evacuation procedure is an obstacle to the performance of their duties, independent of the employees. Employees during the trial evacuation, performing mandatory fire drills, remain ready for work, therefore the time of performing exercises is included in the working time.

If the trial evacuation leads to a situation where employees exceed their working hours during the evacuation, the employer is obliged to pay them remuneration for overtime work.

The entity obliged to organize a trial evacuation is primarily the owner of the building or land or their administrator. Such an entity may also be a user or an entity actually in possession of a building or area.

Source: https://poradnikprzedsiebiorcy.pl/-organizing-probnej-evakuacji

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