Motivational forces

DYNAMIC EMERGENCY exit signage is more than twice as easily seen by building occupants. Second, it helps those occupants make up their mind as to what course of action they’ll take more than twice as quickly. Third, it allows them to move towards safety in less than half the time and, last but not least, cuts congestion at building exit points by over a third. It’s a compelling narrative.

Modern life has brought us different types of emergency to consider beyond that of fire, meaning that we need to be flexible and agile in keeping our people safe. This includes how we direct them around or out of a given building under different conditions such as a terrorist attack, a bomb or chemical alert or even an active shooter incident.

You would imagine, then, that everyone would want dynamic emergency exit signage in their building. After all, why wouldn’t you wish to increase the safety of your people for as little as a few thousand pounds? Unfortunately, life isn’t that simple. There are other factors to consider as part of the mix, among them responsibility, compliance and cost.

Compliance, of course, is a legal requirement. Many organisations believe this to be adequate even though they also know it’s a minimum standard based upon signage designed in the 1970s. Strictly speaking, they’re right. It should be adequate. However, is adequate really enough, and particularly so when it comes to safety?

Clearly, change invariably costs, in the short-term at least. For an organisation working in a small space and/or where money’s tight, the cost versus benefit argument may seem less conclusive. Not all of us have the luxury of being able to consider upgrading any aspect of our working environment, even our fire system, when the budget doesn’t allow or when the return on investment is less apparent and more difficult to justify. Perhaps we’re tenants and the fire system employed isn’t our responsibility so why should we worry? 

However, before you dismiss the idea, there are a number of other needs that dynamic signage could help you address and problems it could help to solve.  There are also circumstances where it could actually save money as well as make life easier that many fail to consider.

Let’s explore the key motivators and reasons for specifying, buying or demanding dynamic signage that may not have been considered and might justify upgrading to a performance-based solution even if such a notion had once been shunned. Those motivators are a structural problem, an operational need, an aspirational want and a personal desire/moral imperative.

Structural problem

A building’s structure, size, shape and layout impact how it’s used and how it can be used. Older buildings provide greater individualism, interest and character and can be great places in which to work. Furthermore, they may have historical and architectural significance, providing balance as well as diversity to a cityscape. Preserving them may help save the look of the local built environment as well as natural resources. However, they can be complicated and costly to run, change, update or re-purpose.

More modern buildings typically offer greater efficiency, flexibility and cost-effectiveness and may be more readily adapted to suit our changing needs. Whether old or new, buildings bring their own challenges. Owners change, tenants move, organisations grow or shrink and areas within may be re-purposed, each of which can bring the need for significant structural change.

With older buildings in particular, balancing occupancy capacity with structural restrictions such as narrow corridors or tight stairwells may create the need for complex remodelling or a more complex fire strategy. Less open space and less clarity in terms of evacuation routes add to the challenge, as does the risk of fewer practicable escape routes. This may increase the risk of potential delay in decision-making when trying to exit the building due to less linear corridors and more route options within a floor or space risking safety and, potentially, jeopardising compliance.

A re-modelling project may have inadvertently confused one or more exit routes increasing exit complexity, with this lack of clarity restricting ease of sign-off by Building Control. Providing clear, intuitive guidance to a broader, international demographic with differing levels of familiarity of the space and fitness in such circumstances can also be difficult with simple, passive signage.

‘Responsible Persons’ must ensure there’s an effective fire strategy in place and that the safety and security of all building occupants in a range of emergency situations is assured. Dynamic signage can help resolve issues that such changes may create, typically much more quickly and cost-effectively than the alternative re-design, re-modelling or structural change. 

Furthermore, Building Control is beginning to recognise that dynamic signage offers greater flexibility and control over conventional signage such that it might even be suggested as an alternative to a costly structural change.

Operational need

The growing complexity, size and design of modern buildings brings new challenges to address when trying to ensure an efficient evacuation. It’s often necessary to employ new approaches in terms of controlling people movement and, accordingly, fire strategies are becoming more advanced and elaborate.

Such approaches include phasing evacuation by floor or zone, compartmentalisation or pointing occupants in different directions based upon given scenarios. It may be appropriate to evacuate a single floor or group of floors perhaps simultaneously, moving people upwards and downwards to the adjacent safe floors rather than directing them out of the building.

Given that this isn’t just about a fire, strategies and infrastructure need to be sufficiently flexible to adapt and enable agile solutions that can help manage the movement of people in any emergency situation. Those responsible for managing large and complex buildings in such a variety of dangerous scenarios need all the assistance they can muster.

Dynamic signage not only provides clarity and efficiency, but also enhances the ability to manage people movement and adapt at short notice in accordance with the emergency or crisis in progress. This is a degree of control that’s simply not possible with conventional signage.

Each sign is addressable, meaning that it can be controlled independently of those around it. How it behaves (ie passive, dynamic green arrow and adaptive red cross) can be dictated by not only the fire panel through cause-and-effect programming, but also by manual intervention if necessary.

This enables building occupants to consider, anticipate and predict a range of scenarios and then pre-determine the corresponding signage behaviour.  Should X and Y happen then signs 1 to 6 will do this. However, should Z happen too then signs 2 and 3 will do this instead.

Similarly, occupants can adapt as the environment changes. The controlled evacuation of different areas or floors of the building is enabled with people sent in different directions, spreading the loading across the available facilities and minimising risk and congestion.

The facility for manual intervention adds an additional level of control to allow for the unexpected or a temporary variable such as an area of the building being closed for refurbishment or being used for an alternative purpose such as an event or a meeting.

The added performance and functionality over that provided by traditional signage brings the building into the 21st Century, making it properly ‘Smart’, able to cope with the modern living and working environments while realising the flexibility and agility to adapt to short-term and long-term changes.

Aspirational want

Aspirational may be defined as the want to achieve or the desire to perform to a high level and not being satisfied with the status quo. This is very much about performance beyond compliance and may be a personal or organisational imperative, or perhaps both in tandem.

These days, the values that an organisation or brand lives by or stands for make a difference to how it performs, also impacting how it’s perceived by the outside world, staff, suppliers, customers and even competitors. This might include the culture within the organisation and how staff are treated, whom they work with, how they operate, why they do what they do and what’s important to them.

Increasingly, Health and Safety is becoming a more dominant priority. Anyone who’s familiar with the construction industry will know how it has been transformed by proactively prioritising and embracing Health and Safety from training and site procedures through to how staff and visitors park their cars.

Offices and buildings are simply other kinds of ‘site’. We should consider the Health and Safety aspects within them just as much as a project manager might consider them on their construction site. Keeping its people safe is, after all, the first priority for any employer.

Dynamic signage is at the heart of this aspirational want. When an alarm sounds, the foremost priority is to ensure that everyone on site can exit quickly, safely and calmly. That’s something dynamic signage was designed to enable. People and buildings should be as safe as they can be. This is something that should become integral to personal and organisational missions and aspirations. There are always considerations around cost savings. We must also consider ways in which to improve safety and save lives.

Moral imperative

Wikipedia defines a moral imperative as: ‘A strongly felt principle that compels that person to act'. We want those people who use buildings to be safe.  We also expect the buildings we use and inhabit to be safe.

The Health and Safety Executive states that the first responsibility or duty of an employer is ‘to protect the health, safety and welfare of its employees and other people who might be affected by its business. Employers must do whatever is reasonably practicable to achieve this. That means making sure workers and visitors are protected from anything that may cause harm and effectively controlling any risks to injury or health that could arise in the workplace’.

The Government states the first responsibility of a landlord is to ‘keep the property safe and free from health hazards’. Business owners, employers and landlords have an obligation – and a moral imperative – to keep people in their employ, under their care and in their building(s) safe.

Shouldn’t everything be done to ensure this? In modern society, is simple compliance or adherence to the minimum requirement enough? We’re rarely satisfied with the minimum of anything, so why should we be when it comes to fire safety?  Further, when we realise the inefficiencies of a system that’s based upon signage developed in the 1970s, isn’t it time we all felt obliged to fit the latest and best solution to help minimise risk and keep our buildings and people safe no matter what? 

Can we really go home to sleep soundly with peace of mind having achieved or maintained only the minimum safety levels in buildings? If people are aware that dynamic signage is basically twice as effective as the conventional passive ‘running man’, perhaps there’s a moral imperative for them to do something about that and specify it today.

Alan Ward is Commercial Director at Evaclite (www.evaclite.com)