Optimizing Fire Safety Equipment Inspections: Access, Certification, and Documentation
Fire safety equipment is the arsenal of integral utilities that save people and environments from fire hazards. When a fire occurs in any environment, it is imperative that there is something to protect people from the danger of fire heat and burns, and equipment is a given in any of these situations.
This article will examine the importance of fire safety equipment, fire safety compliance with equipment, equipment inspections, and the requirements, certifications, documentation, and external agencies for inspections.
Fire Safety Equipment - Your First Barrier Of Protection
Fire safety equipment is your only protection against a fire hazard before you can contact and get help from external fire authorities. It plays a crucial role in preventing fires before they even begin and putting out the small fires so they don’t become a huge problem.
The need for fire safety equipment is self-explanatory; it can save people’s lives. That is why inspections are as crucial as having fire safety equipment. So here are a few significant reasons you should get yourself fire safety equipment inspections done frequently,
Fire Safety and Reliability
The most important and apparent reason is safety against fire hazards. Fire safety equipment are the first responders to fires before backup in the form of firefighters arrive, so they must work like they’re supposed to if you hope to keep the fires away before getting help.
Inspections ensure all fire safety equipment works properly, even if a fire hazard hasn’t happened. If an emergency does happen, you know and are assured that your equipment does indeed work how you need it.
Reliability in these situations prevents fires from causing actual harm and decreases the tension and panic in the situation. This can make it much easier and calmer to get people to safety effectively.
Detect Defects
If some part of your fire protection system or any of your equipment is out-of-date or doesn’t work correctly, there’s no way for you to directly find this out without using the equipment. Inspections are how you can test them before you might have to use them.
Inspections detect any defects in the equipment and give you a way of implementing a solution so that you can repair or replace it based on its performance. The earlier you detect a problem with the tool, the cheaper it will be to resolve it.
Laws and Regulations
If safety is not a convincing point, then compliance has to be. Many governmental organizations, such as the NFPA (National Fire Protection Association) and OSHA (Occupational Safety and Health Administration), have mandated that fire safety equipment be inspected regularly to ensure proper functioning and effectiveness.
It is a punishable offense by the law not to maintain your fire sprinklers, fire alarms, emergency lighting, fire detectors, emergency exit doors, fire extinguishers, and other fire safety equipment.
Rather than spending money on substantial, unnecessary fines and violations, you can pay much less for inspections and repairs to your system when it needs maintenance.
No Worry
When you have a system and regular inspections of that equipment, you feel safer and have more trust in your system. You know that it will work if anything like a fire accident happens and that your most valuable resources will not be damaged and are safe.
It creates a sense of peace, which allows you to focus on your business and not have to worry about the safety of your employees and your environment all the time. It not only does this but also increases confidence in your workers that they are adequately protected and cared for in the organization, and thus a booster to work better, more efficiently, and more effectively without having to overthink about their safety in the workplace.
Equipment Upgradation
Even though everything in your system is working as it’s supposed to, there may be specific components that are older models or parts that are not operating as efficiently as possible.
Even if these parts work at 100% of their power, technological advancements daily make some parts available for a better version or upgrade. This is where the importance of inspections strikes.
Inspections can help you realize that your equipment needs an immediate upgrade to better prepare and protect you against fire hazards. An upgrade can replace a fully functional part, but if it works with better efficiency and functionality, it is worth investing in, and inspections can help you make that decision.
Insurance Premiums and Discounts
For any asset that is valuable to you, like your house or your health, it is wise to insure it and protect the value of your assets. Similarly, your business, building, and employees are essential to your structure. They are valuable to you, so they are worth protecting against any unexpected harm with insurance.
When insurers inspect a property for insurance, they check for the existence and condition of fire safety equipment. Risk assessment is a significant factor in insurance, and the presence of fire safety equipment, like a fire alarm system, can significantly reduce the risk in an environment, leading to much cheaper premiums.
People need to learn that many insurance companies reward proper building protection with safety equipment by providing discounts on premiums to their customers and even extra incentives to choose their services instead of others. You can decrease your insurance expenditure by adequately protecting your environment with fire equipment.
Therefore, regular equipment inspections allow officers to evaluate your protection and inform you of potential discounts and incentives you could be receiving.
Inspecting Your Equipment
When inspecting your equipment and ensuring it is functioning appropriately, several factors must be considered to ensure that you follow compliance and meet the requirements of standards like NFPA 25. For different types of equipment, there are other requirements for the frequency and type of inspections that must be performed.
All of these are lined out in the codes and standards of the NFPA, but there are a few specific pointers that we’ll go in-depth about to give you a better understanding of inspections and their requirements,
Access
- During an emergency, every piece of equipment meant for safety against fire must be accessible to everyone in the building.
- The alignment and placement of the equipment should be as equally spaced as possible so that everyone can reach and use this system within seconds.
- Unnecessary obstructions, such as furniture or electrical appliances, should not prevent access to equipment like fire extinguishers or manual call points for an alarm system.
- The equipment should be placed in an area where it is always visible to anyone looking for it. It should be in lighting that makes the equipment visible and stands out with its color in the environment.
- Correct signage needs to indicate in which direction the equipment is, what type of equipment is where, and signs pointing towards the fastest exit points to safety in an emergency.
- Staff must be trained frequently with mock fire drills, which can indicate the immediate difficulty of obstructions and lighting problems and pass on information about the building’s exit routes.
External Agencies
- Using an external inspection agency can help transfer the load of following compliance for your inspections to other professionals who can conduct them with ease and plenty of experience.
- External agency inspections are also encouraged because they provide an external and unbiased view of your system. They will be thoroughly inspected, and any problems will be communicated to you without any obstruction.
- Experienced Individuals have the knowledge and skills to do an inspection right and know what to look for when inspecting your equipment. They will also learn how frequently these inspections need to be done and make those frequent visits more manageable for you.
- There are many different inspection agencies out there that can fit your budget and exact needs. After researching, you can choose from various services and select what you think is best for your business.
- When dealing with external agencies, it is essential to have a clear structure of communication regarding your expectations, your needs regarding the inspection, and the standards that need to be followed in your region for the inspection.
- The final important point of using external agencies is to ensure that you take the inspection’s feedback seriously and act on any immediate changes that need to be made to your system.
Certifications & Verifications
- When you get an inspection, it needs to be done by fire inspectors and technicians who know what they’re doing and are certified to carry out these functions.
- Verify what certification any officers have before you allow them to inspect your property and ensure they are permitted to inspect equipment within your region. You can also verify this with your AHJ (Authority Having Jurisdiction).
- Ensure that these officers adhere to the codes and standards of your local region. It can vary slightly from place to place. A conversation with your local AHJ and the inspectors can clear up any doubts about the situation.
- Maintain a record of all the inspectors’ certificates and documentation. This can be your source of information and evidence for your inspections if they ever need to be presented to a higher government authority. Also, keep an eye on their license renewal periods.
- Fire safety standards change occasionally, but they stay the same most of the time. Ensure you are updated with the new standards and comply with them during your inspections.
Documentation
- Similar to adhering to standards and ensuring that your inspection technicians are legal, documentation of all the processes during fire equipment inspections is essential.
- Documentation is the only physical and digital evidence to show that an inspection has been done, records have been made, and you are following compliance with the laws to a T.
- Your documentation should contain all information about the results of your inspections, what the officers found during the inspection, and the final corrective actions that they requested be done to the equipment for better safety.
- You can use digital tools for comprehensive storage of your documents and efficiently access these files if you need them. You can also implement standard digitalized forms and checklists so that you don’t need to repetitively start over every single time an inspection has to be done.
- Train your staff to be informed of proper documentation procedures and what an official requires at the end of each inspection.
Keeping Up With Standards, Inspections, and Maintenance
With the number of fire hazard deaths increasing over the years due to kitchen fires, industrial fires, malfunctioning hardware, and hazardous materials, inspection metrics must be taken seriously and done so that safety is assured in situations of crisis.
Maintaining your systems with compliance and figuring out whether your system needs maintenance through your fire inspections is a regular activity that must be done with your business, no matter the difficulties that may arise.
This article gave you a better understanding of the importance of inspections, some of the critical factors included in the inspection process, and how to follow compliance in maintaining your fire safety equipment. If you want more information about compliance with fire protection systems according to government regulations and the importance of redundancy in fire protection, take a look at our detailed blog for more tips, or check out our collection of wide-ranging articles about fire inspection and fire safety.
Your business deserves to be protected for the value it brings to your life, but something above your business is the safety of life, both of you and your employees. Standards and regulations are changed from time to time because they take into account newer situations and ways in which people may be endangered due to the effects of fire hazards.
Keeping up with these standard changes and updating your fire protection equipment systems is the best way to guarantee life safety for everyone in your surroundings. As much as this article emphasizes the importance of inspections and how to conduct them efficiently, they can still be very complex and challenging to implement. This is where ZenFire can help you run your inspection business better.
We have a library of 500+ ready-to-use checklists that are instantly available for download and use. Take advantage of these resources to finish your inspections, installations, and audits in no time, letting you focus on growing your business and operational objectives.
If you’re interested in how ZenFire can help you and your technicians with your whole business, take a free demo on us and see what we can do for you.
Explore more templates
Fire safety equipment inspection documentation review refers to the process of examining the records and reports related to the inspection, maintenance, and testing of fire safety equipment within a building or facility.
Fire safety equipment inspection certification verification refers to the process of confirming that the inspections of fire safety equipment, such as fire extinguishers, alarms, sprinkler systems, and emergency lighting, have been conducted by certified professionals or agencies.
Fire safety equipment inspection access refers to the ability for authorized personnel, such as fire inspectors or maintenance technicians, to physically access fire safety equipment for inspection, testing, maintenance, and servicing purposes.
A fire safety equipment inspection by an external agency involves hiring a third-party organization or professionals specializing in fire safety to conduct assessments and inspections of fire protection equipment and systems within a building or facility.
Tailored to meet your specific requirements, enabling you to manage
inspections and reports with greater detail and efficiency
ZenFire is a lot more customized to my business. Before I was using a generic app, I could not customize, like I do now."
