Evacuation Diagram vs Emergency Plan: What Is the Difference?

Many building owners and facility managers use the terms "evacuation diagram" and "emergency plan" interchangeably. They are not the same thing. In Australian Standard AS 3745, the national standard for emergency planning in facilities, they are two distinct documents with different purposes and audiences.

AS 3745 is a voluntary standard. It carries legal force only where a state or territory law or regulation picks it up, and the legal duties themselves come from state and territory law: the work health and safety laws, plus each state's fire safety laws. Queensland's Building Fire Safety Regulation 2008, for example, never mentions AS 3745. Diagrams are drawn to AS 3745 because it is the national benchmark for what a diagram should show.

Understanding the difference matters because the two serve different functions during an emergency, and most workplaces end up with both.

What Is an Evacuation Diagram?

An evacuation diagram is a visual floor plan displayed on walls throughout a building. It is designed for everyone: staff, visitors, guests, and contractors. Its purpose is to show people how to get out of the building safely.

Key characteristics:

• A visual document (floor plan with symbols and routes)
• Displayed publicly on walls at specified locations
• Designed for immediate use by anyone, including first-time visitors
• Shows exit routes, fire equipment, and assembly area for a specific location
• Each diagram is customised to its display position ("You Are Here")
• Drawn to AS 3745, which sets out content, size and placement in clause 3.5

What Is an Emergency Plan?

An emergency plan is a written document that describes how a facility will respond to various emergency situations. It is primarily a management document, used by fire wardens, building managers, and the Emergency Planning Committee.

Key characteristics:

• A written document (typically 20 to 100+ pages)
• Not displayed publicly. Kept by building management, wardens, and the EPC.
• Covers multiple emergency types: fire, bomb threat, medical emergency, hazardous material spill, severe weather, armed intruder
• Includes roles and responsibilities for wardens, chief warden, communications officer
• Contains procedures for each emergency type (what to do step by step)
• Includes warden lists, contact numbers, equipment registers, training records
• What it must cover is set by law (regulation 43 of the model WHS Regulations, and state fire safety laws such as Queensland's), with AS 3745 as the usual benchmark for its structure and review

How They Work Together

Think of the emergency plan as the instruction manual and the evacuation diagram as the quick reference card.

During an emergency:

• The emergency plan tells wardens what to do (check floors, direct people, report to chief warden, communicate with fire brigade)
• The evacuation diagram tells occupants where to go (follow exit route, proceed to assembly area)
• Wardens use the plan. Occupants use the diagram.
• Both reference the same assembly area, exit routes, and fire equipment locations. They must be consistent with each other.

Who Needs What?

The legal requirements depend on the state, the building and its use:

• Workplaces need an emergency plan. Regulation 43 of the model WHS Regulations (Victoria has its own OHS laws) requires a person conducting a business or undertaking at a workplace to have one, and it must include evacuation procedures.
• In AS 3745, the Emergency Planning Committee (EPC) is the group responsible for the emergency plan. Following the standard is good practice; it becomes a legal requirement only where a law adopts it.
• Whether diagrams must go on the wall, and from what size, is set by each state. Small businesses in a single tenancy can keep a short plan, but should check their state's rule before assuming diagrams are optional.
• In Queensland the written plan is called the fire and evacuation plan (Fire Services Act 1990, section 146O). It must include an evacuation diagram, whatever the size of the building (Building Fire Safety Regulation 2008, section 21(2)(c)), and wall display is required once the building's total floor area reaches 300 m2 (section 30). See the Queensland evacuation diagram requirements.
• Multi-tenanted buildings typically have a base building emergency plan (managed by the body corporate or building owner) plus individual tenant plans.
• Schools, hospitals, and aged care facilities need both, often with additional requirements from their sector regulators.

Common Mistakes

The most frequent errors we see:

• Having an emergency plan but no evacuation diagrams (or vice versa)
• Diagrams that show different exit routes than what the emergency plan describes
• An emergency plan that has not been updated to reflect building changes, while new diagrams have been printed showing the current layout
• Assuming the fire safety company that installed the alarms also provided diagrams and an emergency plan (they usually do not)
• Confusing an evacuation diagram with a fire safety plan (the drawing submitted to council during development approval, which is a different document entirely)

What EvacPath Provides

EvacPath draws evacuation diagrams to AS 3745. For sites whose diagrams I have drawn, I can also write the evacuation procedure from them: raising the alarm and calling 000, getting everyone out and checking they are out, meeting the fire crew, the way out from each diagram location to the assembly point, where the fire equipment is, and helping anyone who needs assistance. The diagrams go into it.

The rest of the plan needs knowledge only your business holds: who runs an evacuation and how to reach them, how staff are trained and how often you practise, and who keeps the plan current. I leave those as marked fields in an editable Word copy, so you, or whoever looks after safety at your business, complete the draft instead of starting from a blank page. The plan remains your own site document, and responsibility for it stays with your business (in Queensland, the occupier of the building). Outside Queensland, the procedure forms the evacuation part of your workplace emergency plan; you add the parts specific to your site, such as other kinds of emergency.

Whoever prepares it, the diagrams and the plan should reference each other: the same exits, routes, fire equipment and assembly area. A procedure written from the diagrams starts out that way.

For diagrams, send me your floor plans and I will deliver print-ready PDFs in 3 to 5 business days. Diagram packages start at A$280 for up to 4 diagrams, and the written procedure adds from A$150.