An emergency plan is not a fire drill. The duty covers every hazard on site, and it must be tested.

What regulation 43 actually requires

The duty has three verbs: prepare, maintain, implement. Regulation 43(1) requires a PCBU to ensure an emergency plan is prepared for the workplace that provides for emergency procedures, including an effective response to an emergency, evacuation procedures, notifying emergency service organisations at the earliest opportunity, medical treatment and assistance, and effective communication between the person authorised to coordinate the emergency response and everyone at the workplace. The same subregulation then requires two things plans routinely omit: testing of the emergency procedures, including the frequency of testing, and information, training and instruction for the workers who would have to carry the procedures out. Regulation 43(2) requires the plan to be maintained "so that it remains effective", and 43(4) requires it to be implemented in an actual emergency. Each limb carries its own penalty. In preparing and maintaining the plan the PCBU must have regard to the nature of the work, the nature of the hazards, the size and location of the workplace, and the number and composition of the people in it: the law's way of saying a lone cleaner in a city office and a chemical plant do not get the same plan.

All hazards means all hazards

The work environment code, the approved code of practice that carries regulation 43, lists the emergency types a plan should contemplate: fire or explosion, dangerous chemical release, medical emergency, natural disaster, bomb threats, violence or robbery. Safe Work Australia's emergency plans fact sheet adds rescues and armed confrontations to the list, and both documents make the same structural point: the plan is built from a practical assessment of the hazards of the work and the workplace, not from a fixed menu. That is why the duty stretched to cover a pandemic without a word of it changing, and why it reaches weather, spills and aggression today. The code also pushes the assessment past the boundary fence: external hazards count, and its worked example is a chemical storage facility across the road. The fact sheet's checklist runs the neighbour risk in both directions, asking whether fire from a neighbouring restaurant or takeaway food outlet, Q fever from cattle yards or vehicle accidents on major roads could become your emergency. Fire is one line in that assessment. This masthead has covered the fire slice separately: the National Construction Code builds the exits and regulation 43 gets people to them. This page is about the whole plan the exits serve.

What the procedures should address, line by line

Chapter 5.1 of the code turns the regulation into a working list. Where relevant, the emergency procedures should address: allocated roles for people with appropriate skills, such as area wardens; clear lines of communication with the response coordinator; how alarms are activated and people alerted; the safety of everyone who may be present, including visitors, shift workers and tradespeople; workers and others who will need assistance to evacuate; critical functions such as a power shut-off; identified safe places; risks from neighbouring businesses; a displayed site plan showing fire protection equipment, emergency exits and assembly points; emergency phone numbers including out-of-hours contacts; access for emergency services; and the use and maintenance of the equipment specific emergencies need, the code's examples running from spill kits and extinguishers to fixed gas monitors and sprinklers. The fact sheet adds a post-incident layer most plans forget: notifying the regulator where the event is a notifiable incident, determining the cause, and organising medical treatment or trauma counselling afterwards. Safe Work Australia publishes a free emergency plan template for small workplaces; the code names AS 3745-2010, Planning for emergencies in facilities, as the standard for larger ones.

The testing duty is the part that bites

A plan that has never been run is words. The regulation makes testing part of the plan's mandatory content, the code states that emergency procedures must be tested in accordance with the emergency plan in which they are contained, and its procedures list sets the floor for the most familiar test: regular evacuation practice drills at least every 12 months. Training sits beside testing: workers must be instructed and trained in the procedures, and the fact sheet points training at the specifics, practising evacuations, knowing assembly points and equipment locations, and how to safely shut down machinery, with refresher training for existing workers, induction coverage for new ones and specific training for wardens and first aid officers. The maintenance limb then keeps the plan honest between drills. The fact sheet's review triggers are workplace changes such as relocation or refurbishment, changes in the number or composition of staff including more temporary contractors, new activities, and after the plan has been tested, because a drill that went badly is data.

Shared buildings and the workplaces that need more

In a workplace shared by multiple businesses, a shopping centre, construction site or multi-tenanted office building, the code says preparation of the plan should be coordinated by the person with management or control of the workplace, who may be the property manager, principal contractor or landlord, in consultation with all tenants. A new tenant triggers a review. Coordination does not move the duty: regulation 43 sits on each PCBU, and the fact sheet suggests a master emergency plan that all duty holders use. Some workplaces need a more comprehensive plan: the code names people sleeping on site such as hotels, large crowds such as stadiums, high risk chemical processes and major hazard facilities, and significant out-of-hours cash handling, and says workplaces with significant consequences should consult local emergency services when developing the plan. The regulations also bolt extra emergency-plan duties onto specific hazards. Above the manifest quantity of Schedule 11 hazardous chemicals, regulation 361 requires the plan to be given to the primary emergency service organisation, and if that organisation recommends changes, the plan must be revised accordingly; the thresholds are on the chemical storage page. Where fall arrest harnesses are the control, regulation 80 demands tested rescue procedures, covered on the working at heights page. The fact sheet's higher-risk list adds confined spaces, asbestos, demolition and mines.

Natural disaster planning, in the regulator's own checklist

Extreme weather gets its own section of the fact sheet's checklist, and it is more operational than most corporate resilience documents. It asks whether control measures will still be effective in extreme conditions; whether the procedures accommodate declared warnings, its examples being a code red in the case of extreme bushfires or categories 3, 4 or 5 for cyclone warnings; whether safe exit routes account for roads that may be closed and how closures are communicated; whether the closest designated safe place is identified; whether procedures follow the evacuation arrangements of the fire services, SES and police; and whether workers have access to reliable communications equipment, with separate policies for workers who travel into warning areas. Heat itself is a separate duty this masthead has covered on the heat and extreme weather page. One honesty note belongs here: the WHS instruments run out where life safety ends. Keeping the business trading after the event, continuity of supply, premises and data, is a commercial discipline the emergency plan duty does not regulate. What regulation 43 buys is narrower and more important: everyone out, everyone accounted for, help called at the earliest opportunity, and a plan that was rehearsed before it was needed.