Blog

Crisis Management in the 21st Century (with Les Allan, Heriot-Watt University)

Summary: We were delighted to have Les Allan, Director of Safety & Security Services at Heriot-Watt University joined David McCarthy (ICR Founder & CEO) recently to discuss how he and his team leveraged ICR (crisis and incident management software) to support his people on all safety, security and emergency planning matters across several University Campuses in the UK, Dubai & Malaysia as well as over 30,000 students. https://youtu.be/mletw8CNbKM Topics discussed: Les gave his thoughts on all things Crisis Management having previously relied on a paper based system to record and store their crisis management plans.  Some of the topics covered included: Importance of managing information to your gold, silver & bronze teams during an incident; Managing a paper based/ manual process. …

Incident Report – Rate your current methodology today

Part 3  – Incident Report  In a previous blog we asked you ‘Are your campus incident response teams ready?’  and a flow chart guided you through questions to find out if your university or campus was rated as unprepared, moderately prepared or very prepared if an incident arouse. The final stage after looking at response is reporting, this is to enable & establish if your reporting procedures work for you or if they could be improved to provide a richer record. Reporting on key incident and crises is of paramount importance when understanding and reviewing how the incident has been handled in terms of; What went well? How improvements can be made? If corrective action needs to be taken? Investigate …

‘Planning for the worst, hoping for the best’ – maximising the security and safety of your students

In the last few months’ campuses around the globe have been subjected to bomb threats, arson attacks, racially aggravated incidents, lone shooter incidents, as well as cyber-attacks – the list goes on and on. Some institutions have responded well, communicated clearly, having dealt with the incident appropriately and efficiently, thus reinforcing their reputation within the education sector. Others, less so and their reputation could suffer irreparable damage as a result. The safety of students and institution reputation go hand in hand It’s easy in both a professional capacity and daily life capacity to adopt an ‘it won’t happen to us’ attitude but no one is safe from the dangers schools face in this modern world. If you think that these …

Rate the Incident Response on your Campus

Are Your Team’s Incident Response Ready?   In our last blog we asked you ‘How would you rate the readiness of your campus to handle incidents’ and a flow chart guided you through questions to find out if your university was rated as unprepared, moderately prepared or very prepared. The next stage after looking at readiness is to look into incident response, to establish if plans and processes are in place to aid or hinder response. Take our test today and find out how your campus rates for incident response:   Did you score A or B – ICR: Campus Incident Control™ can help:   ICR™’s user friendly mobile applications ensures your team have everything they need, when they are …

How would you rate the readiness of your campus to handle incidents?

Preparation is key when it comes to being ‘incident ready’ on campus. In our experience the campuses that handle incidents best are the ones that not only have plans in place but also utilise the latest technology to drive their plans forward. Is your Campus Incident Ready? Find out where your organisation ranks in its readiness to handle incidents via our Readiness Flow Chart:     Did you score A or B – ICR: Campus Incident Control™ can help: Incidentcontrolroom.com® (ICR™) enhances the readiness of your organisation and allows you to retain full control of your system through a sophisticated and highly flexible permission controlled system that can be modelled on your organisational structure. Build, maintain & deploy incident management …

Preventing and Handling False Alarms on Campus – Part 2

In last week’s blog Preventing and Handling False Alarms on Campus – Part 1 we discussed the most common types of incidents, and also which incident type caused Universities the most problems. From our research False Alarm Activation came up time and time again, the blog then went on to give our top tips for preventing false alarms. This blog takes this a step further looking at how best to handle and manage false alarms when they do occur causing minimum impact on the day to day running of your University or College. Here are our Top 5 Tips for False Alarm Management #1 – Formulate plans and procedures ICR: Campus Incident Control™ provides First Responders with accessibility to alarm …

Preventing and Handling False Alarms on Campus – Part 1

Whilst visiting our clients and potential clients in the Higher Education sector we asked them a couple of questions to determine the most common incidents that take place on their campus on a day to day basis, as well as which incident type tends to cause the most problems. The findings are stated below: Top 10 Common Incident Types: Slip, trip or falls on campus False Alarms Students security concerns Minor accommodation fires Power failure / utility issues Students in difficulty Traffic incidents Theft i.e. bicycle New construction issues Bomb scares We also asked ‘Which incident type causes them the most problems?’ The answer that came back time and time again was ‘False Alarm Activation’. The average number of false …

Live incident at Education Establishment

Recent Fire at Pendleton College has sent a reminder to other education establishments to ensure appropriate incident control, management plans and procedures are in place and fully accessible. The Incident A ‘severe’ fire broke out at 10am on the second floor media room of Pendleton Sixth Form College, UK on the 19th of May causing initial panic, with flames and plumes of black smoke coming from the windows. Although the fire was quickly brought under control and all staff and students were all able to escape uninjured, colleges across the country have been questioning how they would react to a similar incident. Over 40 firefighters were called out to tackle the large fire, with crews wearing breathing apparatus tackled the …

5 Top Tips for Preparing and Managing Incidents on Campus

Campuses, whether they be a College, University or International School, are often likened to small cities in terms of geographical spread, population and the wide range of facilities in operation. Managing this diverse environment whilst ensuring business continuity and student safety brings with it, many challenges. Incidents can and do occur all year round whether it be a broken window, slip, trip or fall or something more serious like a fire, bomb scare or even a student incident. Talking to many Universities and International Schools we often ask: How prepared are you to handle the incidents that occur? Are the systems in place to help or hinder reaching a resolution? How do the systems you have in place ensure they support your student safety programs?  More often than …

Top 10 Incident Control Challenges for Education Establishments

At ICR we have worked with a variety of education establishments and hear on a daily basis the challenges they are faced with when it comes to handling and recording incidents on a campus. See below the Top 10 challenges that come up time and time again. Incident Control Inefficiencies – Traditional paper based Incident Management solutions are naturally restrictive, the documentation can be rigid and inflexible. Admin and resource inefficiencies are commonplace with issues regarding version control, duplications of work, unclear workflows, the Incident Control Team (ICT) being reactive as opposed to proactive, as well as issues regarding incident handling out of core business hours. Deploying Plans across a Distributed Environment – Deploying up to date plans across the group …