Legal Foundations of Emergency Management in the Construction Industry

Emergency management policies on corporate level are recommended to reduce financial and legal risk. The basis of this risk are corporate liability laws and, on project level, contract provisions on indemnities and force majeure. The work recommends nine essential principles to the management of construction companies for developing emergency management systems and plans. They will be relevant for the contractors to achieve legal compliance, especially when there are sites under different jurisdictions. This work is a bottom-up analysis of the legal foundations of emergency management. International standards rely on the Plan-Do-Check-Act model as a basis for management systems. This model was used to structure the findings from the analysis of the laws of various countries from both the common and the civil law system. The ‘plan’ and the ‘do’ phase of this model can be filled with legal requirements. Despite the differences in the legal systems of the European Union and the countries and states studied (USA, Washington State, UK, Germany, Italy), there are some similarities. The laws focus on the response measure and less on the type or cause of the accident. The response measures which are regulated in all countries are first aid, fire-fighting, and evacuation. This work presents the similarities and difference in the various codes regarding these response measures and gives guidance on how to manage compliance.