Effective planning for emergencies and other undesired events is an essential part of good business management. Companies need to prepare for situations that could cause potential losses to people, assets, income or the company’s reputation or harm to the environment and society at large. As an integral part of its risk management services, DNV helps companies to develop and maintain effective response plans to control their risk exposure.

Purpose

Emergency planning & accident investigation are two services that address in the first case the potential for events and how to respond to minimize the outcomes and in the second case to identify direct and underlying causes of incidents in a structured context, especially large accidents with complex technical and human causes.

Benefits

A provider of a full range of risk management services, DNV delivers focused, experience-based and effective response plans.

Working closely with the client, we develop an understanding of undesired events and facilitate the development of client-owned response plans. We then train staff and exercise and test plans, so that – if an accident occurs – the response will effectively minimise consequential impacts and losses.

By undertaking incident investigations and incorporating experience into new response plans, we try to ensure that history does not repeat itself.

Our approach

DNV works together with you to gain a thorough understanding of your operations, threats and risk management needs. We help you to improve the effectiveness of your emergency planning, response and investigation capabilities. The service covers all aspects from plan generation, communication and drills to follow-up of major incident investigations. Key services include:

Scenario identification
We help identify the most appropriate scenarios for emergency planning and areas where the level of emergency preparedness is not satisfactory. The analysis is normally based on a risk assessment; this ensures that emergency planning matches the range of possible events, with increased focus on high risk events.

Planning and resources
We work with you to develop effective emergency plans and response strategies, using tools such as pre-fire planning and consequence modelling. This includes fitting the emergency response resources to suit the intent of the plans.

Environmental emergencies
DNV develops oil spill and other environmental emergency response plans using numerical tools. We model source terms, transport and fate of accidental releases and environmental effects. Our expertise in technology and management methods prepares you to respond effectively to such emergencies.

Regulatory and community interactions
Major hazard regulations in many countries specify Emergency Response Planning. We can help you to develop compliant plans tailored to specific needs. Our independent status helps you to communicate emergency plans and risks to local communities and regulators.

Major accident investigation and crisis management
We provide support in major accident investigation by deploying teams with the full range of skills necessary to address technical, management system and accident root cause investigations.

Training, exercise and reviews
Emergency plans are only as effective as the teams that deliver them. DNV has experience developing and reviewing training materials, desktop exercises and more intensive full-scale emergency drills.