How to Make a Compliant Evacuation Plan in Quebec: ISO 23601 Standard, Steps, and Templates

The ISO 23601 standard establishes the minimum content of a posted evacuation plan. This is not a list of good intentions: every missing element is grounds for non-compliance that your fire prevention officer can note.

ISO 23601 does not stop at content; it also governs the physical object. The minimum size is A4 for an individual room, such as a hotel room, and A3 for common areas. Complex buildings require larger formats: the deciding criterion is legibility at a normal reading distance.

The plan is posted at eye level, without obstruction, in places where people circulate and hesitate: building entrances, stairwell landings, circulation junctions, high-occupancy areas, and near exits. Each location receives its own version of the plan, which brings us to the most frequently overlooked rule.

Here is the principle that ISO 23601 imposes and that most Quebec plans violate: the representation of the building must correspond to the viewer's perspective. What is physically in front of the person reading the plan must appear at the top of the plan. The "You are here" marker is not decorative; it is the pivot of this rotation.

The consequence is concrete and costly to discover late: a single floor yields several versions of the plan, one per posting location, each rotated differently. Posting the exact same file in all four corners of a floor guarantees that three out of four people will head in the wrong direction, and that is exactly what a fire prevention officer checks by standing in front of each sign.

The aerial view, or site plan, is the inset that shows the building from above in its immediate surroundings. It answers questions that the floor plan cannot address: where firefighters access the building, where the streets and access routes are located, and above all where the assembly point is located in relation to the facade.

It is the element that transforms a floor plan into an emergency response tool. An assembly point indicated by a simple arrow pointing outside means nothing to anyone. Shown on an aerial view, it becomes an identifiable location, away from the routes that emergency vehicles must take.

These three documents are regularly confused, and requesting the wrong one from your provider wastes weeks. They do not cover the same thing.

In practice, the wall poster alone is almost never sufficient for a commercial or institutional establishment. The evacuation plan is the visible part of the system, not the complete system.

For the vast majority of commercial, institutional, and industrial buildings, yes. Chapter VIII of the Quebec Safety Code has incorporated the 2020 NFC since April 17, 2025, and requires owners and operators to have a compliant and implemented fire safety plan. According to the Régie du bâtiment du Québec (RBQ), the 18-month transition period ends on October 16, 2026: as of October 17, only the new edition applies to non-exempt buildings. Your municipality may add its own requirements.

The risk is by no means theoretical. The ministère de la Sécurité publique du Québec (Quebec Ministry of Public Safety) records more than 45 fires per day in the province, and human error is involved in 48.7% of damaged residential buildings.

Start from your architectural plans, or else survey and draw each floor: load-bearing walls, partitions, rooms, corridors, stairwells, doors and their swing direction. The classic trap is reproducing the building as it was before the work. A moved partition, a blocked-off corridor or an added exit that does not appear makes the plan non-compliant, and dangerous the day it is used.

Identify all exits, including those that are often forgotten: loading docks, service exits, exterior emergency exits. From each zone, trace the shortest path to the nearest exit, then a second route that can be used if the first is blocked. Routes are drawn with a high-contrast solid line, usually green, and never pass through an elevator. Explicitly plan routes and safe waiting areas for persons with reduced mobility.

Position extinguishers, hoses, manual pull stations, AEDs, and first aid kits at their actual location, using ISO 7010 pictograms. This is where homemade templates fail the most: invented symbols, inconsistent from one floor to another, illegible under stress. Each pictogram used must appear in the legend.

The assembly point is outdoors, at a safe distance, clear of firefighter access routes, and identical on all building plans. Add the instruction block: activate the alarm, close doors upon leaving, proceed to the assembly point, clear the facade, call 9-1-1 from a safe location. Finish with the revision date and emergency numbers. Then adapt the plan for each posting location by applying the orientation rule.

Looking for an evacuation plan model or a fillable template is a natural reaction, and it is also the most common dead end. A generic template shows a building that is not yours: corridors, exits, and rooms that do not exist on your premises. It cannot satisfy the site accuracy required by ISO 23601, the orientation rule, or the actual placement of equipment. A sample plan remains useful for understanding what the expected result looks like, never as a document to post.

The middle ground between a template and a specialized firm is a dedicated drawing tool. The GCA Do It Yourself application starts from your building's PDF plan, applies standardized symbology, and produces a plan that reflects your premises, with an integrated satellite view.

Design can cost nothing. With the Do It Yourself application, drawing your building, plotting routes, placing pictograms, and viewing the finished plan is completely free. You only pay if you download the print-ready high-definition PDF. If you prefer to delegate, GCA also designs custom evacuation plans, printed on MPVC, aluminum snap frames, or aluminum panels, delivered anywhere in Canada. The price then depends on the medium, size, and quantity of plans.