On the way to the office recently, a member of the First Aid Canada team walked past a construction site and could not resist asking one of the workers a simple question. Did they have an AED on site? It was none of their business, but anyone who knows First Aid Canada knows the question was going to get asked.
The answer was telling. Yes, there was an AED in the truck, but the worker admitted it was pretty buried in there.
Credit where it is due. That company spent the money and put a defibrillator on site, which is more than plenty of workplaces have done. But it points to something First Aid Canada runs into constantly. Almost all of the attention goes into the purchase, and almost none goes into the thirty seconds that decide whether the purchase ever matters.
The purchase is the easy decision
Buying an AED is a budget conversation. It gets approved, it arrives, and it feels finished. Somebody found a spot for it, and everyone moved on to the next thing.
Placement is a different kind of decision, and it is harder because it has no obvious deadline. Nobody is waiting on it. The unit is already on site, so on paper the workplace is covered. The problem only surfaces on the one day it counts, and by then the decision has already been made, quietly, by whoever set it down somewhere convenient months earlier.
That is why First Aid Canada treats placement as part of the purchase rather than an afterthought. An AED that cannot be reached in time is not protecting anyone. It is just equipment.
Response time is the only measurement that counts
Sudden cardiac arrest does not leave room for a search. Survival falls with every minute that passes before defibrillation, which means the useful question is not whether the workplace has an AED. It is how long it takes to have it open and on the floor beside someone.
There is a simple way to find out, and it costs nothing. Pick the spot in the building furthest from the AED, and have somebody walk it. Not jog it, walk it, because that is closer to what a panicking person actually manages. Then walk back. If there are stairs, a locked door, a security desk, or a corridor that means guessing which way to turn, that time adds up faster than anyone expects.
Most workplaces are surprised by the number. That surprise is the whole point of the exercise, and it usually leads to a better answer than any amount of theory would.
The three places AEDs quietly go wrong
The buried truck is the obvious one, but it is not the most common. First Aid Canada sees the same three patterns everywhere.
The first is the locked room. An AED in an office that gets locked at five, or behind a door that only management has a key for, is unavailable to the evening shift, the cleaning crew, and anyone working a weekend. The second is the tucked away unit, sitting in a supply closet or on a shelf in a back hallway where it stays safely out of the way and safely out of mind. The third is the unmarked unit, mounted somewhere perfectly sensible with nothing on the wall to tell a visitor, a new hire, or a paramedic that it is there.
In every case, the equipment is present and the response is not. Nobody made a bad decision. The decisions were just made for reasons other than an emergency.
Signage does more work than the cabinet
Most people do not know where their workplace AED is. That is not a failure of memory, it is a failure of visibility, and it is one of the cheapest problems in safety to solve.
Clear AED signs and decals turn a unit into something that can be found by someone who has never looked for it before, which is exactly who will be looking for it. Ceiling mounted or projecting signs work far better than a flat decal in a long corridor, because they can be seen from a distance and from an angle. A cabinet earns its place too, since it protects the unit, makes it obvious, and gives it a permanent home so it stops migrating around the building. First Aid Canada carries AED cabinets, signs and decals, and accessories for exactly this reason, and they tend to be the least expensive part of the whole setup.
The test is simple. Could someone who started this morning find it without asking anyone?
Practical placement for a small workplace
A small business rarely needs a complicated answer. One unit, mounted in a central and public part of the space, is usually the right call. That often means the main corridor, the reception area, or beside the fire extinguisher, since that is a spot people already associate with emergencies and already know how to find.
The instinct to put it somewhere safe, out of reach of visitors or curious hands, is the instinct to resist. An AED in the open is not at risk. An AED nobody can get to is.
Practical placement across multiple sites
Larger organizations have a harder problem, and it is consistency rather than money. When each location chooses its own spot, employees who move between sites have to relearn the building every time, and there is no shared answer to where the AED is.
The fix is to decide once and apply it everywhere. Same style of location, same signage, same cabinet, same placement logic at every site. It sounds rigid, but it means an employee who has been trained at head office knows exactly where to look in the warehouse. On a larger footprint, the walk test does the rest of the work by showing where one unit is not enough, whether that is a second floor, a detached shop, or a yard sitting several minutes from the main building.
Access is a decision, not an accident
Preparedness drifts when nobody is watching it, and AEDs drift more than most things because they are quiet, they do not get used, and they are easy to move. The unit that ends up buried in a truck did not start there. Someone needed the space, or the shelf, or the wall, and it made sense at the time.
In that construction crew’s case, all it would have taken was a supervisor confirming the AED was stored properly before the crew left the yard. Ten seconds, attached to something already happening. That is usually the shape of the fix. Not a policy, not a program, just a decision made deliberately once instead of accidentally over and over.
Give your AED a permanent, visible home with units, packages, cabinets, and signage from firstaidcanada.com.
FAQ
Where should an AED be placed in a workplace?
Somewhere central, public, and reachable by everyone on every shift, ideally beside other emergency equipment people already know how to find. Locked offices, back rooms, and vehicles all delay the response. The practical test is to walk from the furthest point in the workplace to the AED and back and see how long it takes.
How do employees know where the AED is?
Signage, mainly. Clear AED signs and decals, especially ceiling mounted or projecting signs that can be seen down a corridor, are what let someone find a unit they have never looked for before. First Aid Canada supplies AED cabinets, signs, and decals alongside the units themselves.
Does one AED cover the whole workplace?
It depends on the layout, not the square footage. Multiple floors, detached buildings, and large yards can all put a single unit out of practical reach. Walking the distance is the fastest way to find out whether a second unit is needed, and First Aid Canada can help work through placement for larger or multi site operations.