Around the world, Clarion is on the case for state-of-the-art standards in our industry...Recently, Clarion President Geoffrey Peckham participated with a dozen of the world's safety sign experts in reviewing a Draft International Standard for Safety Identification - Escape Plan Signs.

The two-day meeting at DIN headquarters in Berlin, Germany, included experts from Japan, Great Britain, the United States, Germany, France, the Netherlands and Norway. Peckham led the United States delegation to this ISO subcommittee, formally known as ISO/TC 145, Graphical Symbols, Subcommittee 2, Safety identification, signs, shapes, symbols and colours, working group 1.

This ISO subcommittee has been working on the writing of this standard, ISO 23601, for the better part of three years, with the initial working draft efforts having been led by the U.S.' Geoffrey Peckham. Peckham said the main purpose of this standard is to define the look and content of escape plan signs. He said the aim of these signs is to serve as a means to train people about the location of escape routes in buildings. Escape plan signs are meant to be posted in key locations...next to elevators, near stairs, outside and inside large assembly areas, as well as smaller venues, such as on the inside of hotel guestroom doors.

Considering that safety and security are paramount issues in buildings today, these signs are a critical component of every facility's risk management program. People need to be made aware of how to escape a building should a crisis occur and these signs give building owners and managers the means to clearly convey this information. Notably, these signs (along with the evacuation training that occurs with the facility's employees) also provide a means to shift a measure of responsibility to the individual occupant for evacuation, thereby minimizing the building owner's/manager's risk of liability. Not providing escape route information to building occupants risks the accusation of a "failure to plan" - a new form of negligence that is being developed in U.S. courts since the 9/11 and Hurricane Katrina disasters.

The training provided by escape plan signs is meant to occur in non-emergency times - functioning much like the instructions given by flight attendants to passengers on airplanes to locate the nearest exit to their seat prior to take off. In a like manner, escape plan signs give people the means to locate exit paths in buildings so they are aware of this critical information ahead of time should a crisis occur. A natural secondary function of these signs is to provide this orientation in emergency situations. It is for this secondary purpose that Clarion routinely manufactures these signs with safety grade photoluminescent (glow-in-the-dark) materials.

The intention in ISO is for countries around the globe to adopt this standard so that no matter where a person is in the world, they can easily locate escape routes, stairways, exits and fire equipment. "Common formatting, color schemes and graphical symbols will serve to bring a level of universality to these signs so people will be more able to recognize and understand the information presented," said Peckham. "Given the serious safety implications inherent with escape plan signs, standardization in this area is critical to making the world a safer place."

The writing of an international standard normally takes three to four years - years where draft documents go through the rigors of national and international committee review.

"It's a grueling process, and yet the results of our work are standards that are vitally important to improving the global communication of safety," Peckham said after returning to the U.S.

The escape plan standard is nearing completion; the subcommittee reviewed the national comments submitted on the DIS ("Draft International Standard") that had been under national committee review in 2007. All comments were successfully dealt with and the standard will soon be issued as a "Final Draft International Standard" for final vote by the world's national standards committees.

There is no question that the escape plan signs could help save lives. Peckham noted the extensive research by Dr. Guylène Proulx of Canada, the researcher who demonstrated that people don't generally panic in a fire. Escape plan signs can help capitalize on the behavior Dr. Proulx found, as occupants rapidly orient themselves and assess an escape route.

Still to be determined is whether the best practice will be to illustrate the escape routes on the signs with arrows on a light green background, or to simply designate all escape paths with light green shading, without the arrows. The standard allows for both options. "Finding the shortest escape route is essential," Peckham said, "and arrows serve to give concrete directional information."

One of the primary issues with showing arrows on escape plans is that it adds to the complexity of the design of each plan. Given that more than one escape path is always shown on the plan, Peckham believes that the preferred way of constructing these plans is to use digital print techniques that allow each sign to be customized with the proper set of arrows indicating at least two escape paths from each "You Are Here" point.

"It should be noted that escape plan signs are meant to function as part of a building's total egress pathway marking system," Peckham said. "If buildings implement what is now considered best safety practice in terms of egress path marking, people escaping buildings will follow the installed low-located egress path signs - markings that reaffirm the information shown on the escape plan signs, thus giving people a clear sense of the direction to the nearest exit."

Like the egress systems now in use in New York City, Peckham predicted that the escape plan signs will shortly become part of the tool box for any forward-looking building manager. Peckham said Clarion can simplify integrating not only the escape plan signs, but other safety and facility signs as well. "Clarion assists companies to abide by the best practices in safety; we help them to do things correctly and not to reinvent the wheel in the process," he said.

Clarion, headquartered in Milford, PA, has helped write many of the leading safety standards now in use, including New York City's requirement for photoluminescent egress systems in skyscrapers. The company supplies photoluminescent technology, product and machinery labels, facility signs and markings, and risk engineering services to customers around the world. Reach one of Clarion's experts at 800-748-0241 or visit the company online at www.clarionsafety.com.

Escape plan sign with arrows shown below: