Objective

Knowing the exact accident location within a room or on the floor can provide valuable information for investigating and resolving the problem. Once an accident occurs, several people, including external parties, may be involved in investigating and resolving the issue; these people may not be familiar with the building and may find a visual representation of the location, such as an indication on a floor plan drawing, quite helpful.

For example, accidents may occur in very large rooms, such as auditoriums or open floor plans. When investigating and resolving issues in these areas, the safety officer needs to know the exact location within the room to visit. If this information is documented on a floor plan drawing, the safety officer knows the exact area to investigate. If follow-up response involves maintenance work, restricting the area from employees, or filing a report, the safety officer can pass along the floor plan drawing to other parties.

Similarly, accidents can occur in areas not traditionally thought of as rooms, such as lobbies . For these situations, the safety officer does not want to simply refer to the area's identifying number but will want to indicate this location on a visual representation of the floor. Even when accidents do occur in traditional offices, it can be important to specify the exact location within the office, and not simply the room number.

Solution

To support the need for visual representation of the accident location, the Health & Safety application provides both safety managers and occasional users reporting accidents the ability to mark a floor plan drawing with the exact location of an accident. From the forms for accident reporting, users can access a copy of the drawing for the floor on which the accident occurred. They can then zoom into the floor plan and use the box, position marker, arrow, and text tools to mark up the drawing with notes that indicate the accident location.

Knowledge of CAD and drawing tools is not required; users simply drag and drop text boxes, arrows, position makers, and so forth onto a representation of the floor plan. This process is known as adding redlines to a floor plan drawing. The system saves the marked-up drawing as a document and stores it with the accident report.

Procedures