Plan your emergency screen messages before you need them
During an incident, nobody has time to write a clear screen message. This guide walks you through a plan, in seven steps, so that the words, the level, the screens and the people are agreed before the day you need them. It works for a school, a care home, an office or a leisure centre.
Screen messages support your fire alarm, your evacuation procedure and your lockdown policy. They do not replace any of them. Write the screen plan as an annex to the procedures you already have, and get it signed off by the same people.
A plan in seven steps
List the events that need a screen message
Start with your risk assessment, not with the screens. For most buildings the list includes a fire evacuation, a lockdown, a missing person, a site closure for snow or a power cut, and a building fault such as a burst pipe or a lift out of service. Add the events that are specific to you: a pool evacuation, a gas leak in a science block, a resident who has left the building.
Write each message now
Each message needs a title of three to five words and one instruction. Name the place: "Leave by the nearest exit. Go to the muster point on the top field." Avoid words that need thought under stress, such as "assemble" or "proceed". Write in short sentences, and have someone who did not write it read it aloud.
For a lockdown, agree the wording with your safeguarding lead. A corridor screen may be visible through a window, so decide what you want someone outside to read.
Give each message a level
Not every alert is a fire. Sort your messages into three levels and agree what each one means for staff:
- Critical: act now. Evacuation, lockdown.
- Warning: important, but no immediate danger. A missing person, a site closing early.
- Info: a notice. A lift out of service, a fire alarm test at 10:00.
Decide the scope for each message
A kitchen fire in one building does not need to take over a screen in another town. For each message, write down which screens it goes to: every site, one site, or one screen. A school with an infant and a junior building may want a lockdown on both and a burst pipe on one.
Name who can trigger an alert
Pick a small group: the head or manager, the deputy, the site manager, the duty manager out of hours. Each of them needs the access and the app set up on their phone before the plan goes live. Write down who triggers what, and who triggers if they are not on site.
Run a drill
Run the screen message as part of your next fire drill. Use a test message that says it is a drill. Walk the building while it runs: check every screen changed, that people can read it from where they stand, and how long it took. Note any screen that missed it.
Agree how you end it
The person who triggers the alert ends it, or hands that job to someone by name. Ending an alert is part of the procedure: an evacuation message that stays on screen into the next morning teaches people to ignore the screens. After each real alert or drill, record what happened and update the plan.
Your one-page plan
- A list of events, each with a written message.
- A level and a scope for each message.
- The names of the people who can trigger and end an alert.
- The date of the last drill and what you changed after it.
How NowBoard does it
Emergency alerts are on the Professional plan and higher, from £20 a month per TV, ex VAT. See pricing for each plan.
- Pre-written messages: an admin sets up emergency templates in Settings. Ready-made presets include Fire Evacuation, Critical Alert, Test / Drill, Maintenance Mode and Missing Person. A missing-person alert has fields for the name, a photo, a description, the clothing, where the person was last seen and who to tell.
- Levels: each alert is Critical, Warning or Info.
- Scope: an alert goes to the whole Organisation, one Site or one Channel. The screens in the scope change at once, on every TV that plays those Channels.
- Triggering: from the Emergency page in a browser, or from the NowBoard Operator App on a phone. In the app, a red bell on every page opens Emergency. When you tap a template, a 3-second countdown starts, and you can tap Cancel if you chose the wrong one.
- Ending: select Deactivate in the browser, or Clear on the Active tab in the app. Every screen goes back to its usual Playlist. Past alerts move to History, where Re-trigger sends the same alert again.
- Priority: an emergency alert plays over a scheduled Takeover on the same Channel.
NowBoard does not connect to a fire panel, and a person always starts the alert. For the ordinary disruptions, such as a closed lift or a late opening, a Takeover or an Urgent announcement may suit better than an emergency alert.
Read more on the emergency screens page, and see how schools use alerts on corridor displays on the schools page. To go through your own plan on a real screen, book a demo.
See it on your own screens
We show you NowBoard with the Boards for your kind of place. Or sign up free.