>> Voice Over: Shot of Building 108.
[Siren sound] As the evacuation alarms sounds, a lady wearing a fire warden vest warns the students and
staff down the set of stairs.
>> During an emergency evacuation drill of Building 108,
it became quite apparent that we had a problem
with being able to get people with mobility impairments
from the second storey out of the building
in a safe and efficient manner.
>> Lincoln: The building was originally the squash courts.
The two main floor levels are half a level above the main
entry so when you come into the entry, you've got half a flight up to one
teaching level and half a flight down to the lower level.
>> Nadine: On the lower level you are able to egress easily in a wheelchair.
Unfortunately on the middle level and level three
unless you are mobile, you are unable to actually get down the stairs.
So we looked at options around utilising the lift
and then we were told we couldn't use it
because it wasn't fire proofed around the lift.
>> Peter: Normally in most buildings you would have a fire isolated staircase,
but in this case you have an internal staircase
which cannot be isolated from a fire in the building.
So one of the options was to actually construct external fire isolated staircases,
but this option turned out to be prohibitive in cost.
>> Nadine: Then we also looked at an option on the southern end,
a platform, that we could then put a,
that'd go from the top to the bottom.
And then we looked at stairs on the exterior of the building
but from a cost perspective
and from disruption to the utilisation of the building
and also for the occupants, it just wasn't appropriate.
So we've actually come up with an easier solution
that's easier to implement, easier to maintain and easy to train.
>> Voice over: A builder delivers and installs an evacuation chair on the wall.
>> Lincoln: The idea came from Nadine and so we investigated.
And Nadine arranged for an example of the chair
to be brought to the campus by St John Ambulance,
and with a group of stakeholders we tested it, used it, assessed it
and it was agreed it was a good solution to the problem.
>> Ewan: Dan works in the Occupational Therapy building
emptying the recycling bins,
and I'm Dan's care support worker.
And we come up every Wednesday
and are always in the building on different levels
so the evacuation chair is a really good thing for us to have
otherwise I would have had to either carry Dan down or
wait until the fire department come or something like that.
And it just makes me feel a lot better and a lot safer to be in
the buildings now; actually knowing that it's easier to get out and
we're both safe because I wouldn't want to leave Dan.
Although the fire wardens would be shouting at me, going,
"Get out, get out!", I wouldn't leave Dan, that'd be my first priority.
>> Ambulance Officer: I'm gonna raise this handle up to a decent height.
>> Marina: Our students enrolled in the Occupational Therapy program
will learn about using the stair chair as part of their curriculum.
This gives them the opportunity to understand how they can assist
people with disabilities in an emergency situation
but it also means that there are many users of
building 108, who've been trained in its safe use.
>> Peter: We have been looking at similar situations in other buildings
where we have some known egress issues.
So we're embarking on a program of investigating
which buildings would benefit from that
so ultimately, I think, we'll be able to roll this out
into other buildings within the campus.
>> Voice Over: [Siren sound] A student is pushing Dan in the stair chair, alongside other staff and students
exiting the building.
>> Ewan: After using it, it just shows how easy these new chairs are
and how effortless they actually are to get down any flight of stairs
and just get a person out safely without any issues at all.
I think that having these chairs in all the buildings where they need
to be going up and down...
Dan's just pulled off "great" so he thinks it's awesome.
He thinks it's great that it's there.
>> Voice Over: Close up shot of the 'great' card.