If you don’t have a plan for how your meeting team members should respond to the range of possible emergencies they might face on site, it’s likely you’re thinking about putting one together. If you do have a plan, your next concern is whether everyone will actually understand what to do when a crisis strikes and then follow procedure and best practices.
While nothing replaces ongoing training, an app called Event-Aware just launched that can put your meeting’s crisis response protocols and critical contact information onto the smart phone of every member of your meeting team. The app, which works offline, takes users to customized information from buttons on the home screen, such as
• contact lists for company staff, venue staff, and others
• predetermined response procedures for incidents, including power outages, medical emergencies, fires, missing or kidnapped attendees, violent crime, and weather emergencies
• the addresses and contact information of the nearest hospitals and pharmacies
• the evacuation plan for the venue
Available for both Android and iOS devices, Event-Aware also allows planners to submit incident reports using text and image files.
Attainium Corp., which specializes in business continuity planning and emergency response plans for meetings, designed the app. Planners can use their existing emergency plans, or work with the company’s risk experts and its template-driven emergency action plan development tool to create one. A plan can be cloned and then customized for each new meeting. Pricing is based on the size and complexity of an event and whether or not Attainium is helping to build the emergency response plan from scratch.
“Every event organizer knows the importance of having an emergency response plan, but making that plan available to everyone who needs it and keeping it updated have always been an issue,” said Bob Mellinger, Attainium CEO. “Event-Aware gives all users access to vital information even when their mobile devices are not connected to wireless or cell networks.”
