This Rules/Policy document is provided to you and your organization as a starting point or maturity checkpoint for existing rules/policies. It is brought to you on behalf of Jim McConnell, Principal Owner, and Ask McConnell, LLC — A Converged Security Services Provider. The content is not meant to cover every circumstance, industry, law, regulation, contractual requirement, threat, environment, or risk, but it provides an easy, defendable, highly accountable starting point for any organization. Please consult with your legal counsel and insurance provider about added requirements. If you know of peers that you think would find value in these resources, please have them contact us. These will be updated on our website regularly. We are not legally protecting these documents; we just ask for credit, shout-outs, and referrals if you find them helpful. If you have recommended updates, we are all ears. And if you need Converged Security Consulting and Training, please reach out, we would be honored to serve you and your organization.
Jim McConnell | info@askmcconnell.com | askmcconnell.com
Emergency Evacuation / Shelter-In-Place Policy
Updated: 1 May 2025
Important Point: In a true emergency — whether evacuation, shelter-in-place, Run-Hide-Fight, or another response — it is nearly impossible to set rigid rules and policies for the moment itself. Procedures, guidelines, tips, and tricks absolutely exist and can form a long list, many of which are readily available from local, state, and federal agencies. This policy is geared toward before bad things happen (left of boom) and after (recovery) — not to control “in the moment.” In the moment, only one rule applies: Survive and don’t cause more injury.
Protecting human lives is the highest requirement of our entire organization, whether they are employees, customers, volunteers, visitors, or part of our supply chain while under some nexus to our organization.
- I will report security concerns, vulnerabilities, and threats to my supervisor or the organization’s Ethics Hotline; if they are unavailable and I feel unsafe, I will call law enforcement.
- I will attend all training related to emergency evacuation, shelter-in-place, and active assailant response.
- I will follow law enforcement/first responder direction during any event.
- I will not deny ingress/egress to a victim, potential victim, or first responder entering an area I am in or controlling, unless doing so would cause additional harm to them.
- I will manage or support the training of all personnel under my management in pre-incident preparedness, whether evacuation drills, shelter-in-place drills, or medical response (e.g., Stop The Bleed®).
- I will manage or support the warden system with team members of my organization, where operationally feasible.
- I will manage or support all after-action evaluations and improvements.
- I will manage or support a State of Security Report and Presentation, under Executive Session, at least yearly, that covers incidents, vulnerabilities, improvements, and metrics across all domains of Security, including emergency evacuation and shelter-in-place activities.
Signature Note: I am a huge fan of wet signatures on these types of documents for accountability and investigation reasons. You can add the signature lines below to each rule/policy document, or have a collective wet signature with references in the Security Commitment Agreement document available on the One-Pager library page. Organizational preference.
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Print Full Legal Name
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(Blue Ink) Full Legal Signature
Style of signature must closely match Driver’s License
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Date
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