As a Facility Manager, understanding the various aspects of fire and life safety for your building(s) or space(s) is not only paramount to avoiding fines, but critical to protecting your employees and patrons. This is no easy task, as you are probably responsible for numerous locations locally, regionally, and/or locations that are scattered around the country. On top of that, there is the fire and life safety equipment itself as well as the numerous codes, regulations, and laws that govern over it, requiring installation of this or service of that. It can be overwhelming trying to get your arms around all of it or, moreover, even knowing what equipment or systems you have or who’s responsible for maintaining it.
What They Are
As their name implies, National Fire & Life Safety Providers are first and foremost “national”, meaning they cover a lot more ground than your average local fire and safety company. Not only that, National Fire & Life Safety Providers typically have a much wider set of skills and services, which is essential for businesses with multiple locations. And any good National Fire & Life Safety Provider can easily tell you what you have, what you don’t, and what you need to avoid fines, while keeping all of your locations, employees, and patrons safe.
What They Do
From Banking, Entertainment, and Healthcare to Industrial, Restaurants, and Retail, and everything in between, most National Fire & Life Safety Providers will have the resources you need to help you get your arms around things. Be it fire extinguisher service, fire sprinkler/alarm inspection, kitchen fire suppression system installation or hood cleaning, National Fire & Life Safety Providers pretty much do it all. They’re very familiar with all of the codes, regulations, and laws governing the fire and safety equipment you have and/or need, so you don’t have be.
Examples
For instance, if you lease your building(s) or space(s), they should know that in most cases, responsibility for fire safety is split between you and the landlord, but because individual cities may enforce additional requirements, it would be impossible to determine your exact obligations without taking a look at your lease. Should you own your building(s), a good National Fire & Life Safety Provider will know that while the initial responsibility with fire and life safety code compliance lies with the design and construction teams involved in the original design, the facility management team becomes the responsible party throughout the life of a facility that can include performance requirements for specific systems throughout the life of the installed systems.
Save More Than Money
Do you that there are volumes of fire and life safety codes, regulations, and laws that can potentially impact your business in a very negative way, if they are not adhered to? Things like fines, lost revenue, and law suits can result because your emergency lights aren’t working or portable fire extinguishers are missing or there’s too much grease buildup in your kitchen equipment and/or on your roof. There are so many potential infractions, it’s impossible to list all of them here. Lives and property depend on you having the right protection that’s fully operational 24/7/365. What you don’t know can cost you big time—more than money too. It can cost you lives and property as well. But you can save all three with the right National Fire & Life Safety Provider.
