Brianna Fuller

4/25/19

Project Narrative
During my intern orientation, my supervisor was going through our welcome packets and

I couldn’t help but notice that there was no section on emergency management. From the first

day I knew this was something I could improve for this office! I decided to create a Fire Safety

Emergency Management Manual. In the case of an emergency, the only instructions were to exit

the building. I personally feel that before this manual, if an emergency occurred, people would

panic, but after my project I think people feel more confident and ready for whatever comes their

way. This is extremely useful, will be a great asset even after my departure, and could save lives

in the event of various types of emergency situations.

The three objectives I wanted to accomplish during this project were as follows:

• To increase fire safety knowledge of staff members by 50%, by creating a fire manual to
reference before May 1st.
• To provide staff members with 50% more confidence in evacuating by doing a practice
evacuation on March 28th.
• To decrease evacuation time by 20% before May 1st, by doing a needs assessment and
conducting another drill.

For my project, I started off by creating a flyer that stated we would be having a fire drill on

March 28. This would give the staff a heads up, and a little over a week to mentally prepare for

the drill. Next, I created a basis of my fire evacuation manual and informed the staff members on

how to properly evacuate. This included the responsibilities for each individual listed in the

Emergency Chain of Command. During our next office meeting we discussed the best routes for

the evacuation, and the location of the assembly point. I thought the office seemed very ready for

the drill.
 On March 28th, almost all of the employees were present which made this a perfect day! This

makes the drill more realistic in case of a real emergency. I decided to use ice cream as a

delicious form of bribery to get as many people to participate as I could! The ice cream worked

wonders, and almost everyone was included in the drill! After timing how long it took for all the

staff members to get to the assembly point, I knew we needed to regroup, and improve our

strategy for evacuation. Our time was a minute and forty-eight seconds to fully evacuate our

office.

On the day of the drill, there were a few things that I realized we could change in order to

decrease our time, and effectively get everyone out more quickly. On the first run, there were

boxes blocking our exit towards the back of the building. With one of our exits blocked, it took

Beth (whose office is the furthest away), too long to make her way to the front exit. I needed for

both exits to be properly monitored constantly, so both can be used in the case of an emergency.

I created a task for Beth to check the exit closest to her routinely. This alone could have

drastically changed our time, but this was not enough. I also changed up who would be doing

certain tasks. For the department assistants, and the Safety Officer, they must ensure everyone

has vacated during an evacuation. I chose them because they are already located in the back of

the office, there are many of them, and they do not have to go far to complete this task.

Reassigning these tasks would hopefully hep to reduce the amount of time it would take to fully

evacuate.

I decided to run a second fire drill. This time the staff was unaware we were going to have

another drill. After reassigning tasks and implementing them, our second drill went much more

smoothly. This time there were no boxes blocking the exit routes, and the staff seemed to know

their roles well. I also found that doing a drill once before prepared the staff for this evacuation a
little better. This definitely strengthened their confidence on how quickly and efficiently we can

evacuate! Our time decreased a lot! It ended up taking us a minute and twenty-three seconds to

get out of the building. That is twenty-five seconds that could save lives!

As a result, I think conducting the initial drill really helped the staff prepare mentally for

evacuation. Introducing the tasks to the staff prior to the first evacuation gave them a heads up on

how the drill would potentially go. After reassigning the tasks, I believe the evacuation more was

much more efficient. I truly believe all of my objectives were met. The staff did not know about

the second drill. So, when it was initiated, they were confused and not sure if it was a real fire. I

felt that this helped them take it more seriously, and their actions were similar to how they would

be in the event of a real emergency. Following the second drill, the time it took for everyone to

evacuate decreased by twenty-five seconds. I think my fire manual and use of drills drastically

improved Make-A-Wish Georgia's knowledge on fire safety education!