Fire can cause serious damage. It ruins your building’s infrastructure, can cause smoke damage, and at worst, can result in serious injury or death. That’s not a secret, but there are many hidden damages to buildings and facilities that result from structure fires and related safety failures you may not be as familiar with
Psychological damage can occur after a destructive fire as well. Property owners lose trust in the inspectors who service their building. Occupants lose trust in their own safety where they live or work.
Fire inspections are the first step toward fire prevention. The importance of fire and life safety inspections in public buildings like schools or hospitals with a high number of occupants cannot be overstated. While most fire department safety officers have the right equipment and training to inspect your home or public building and ensure code compliance, you still need professionally trained technicians to conduct thorough, regular inspections of each fire protection system.
So what’s the right time to hire a highly skilled technician to inspect your building? (Bonus points if they use Inspect Point’s software to conduct a thorough inspection and generate clean, code-compliant reports.)
What Does a Fire & Life Safety Officer Look For?
To determine who you need to perform your fire and life safety inspection, you first have to understand what it is that needs to be inspected. Primarily, and in the most basic sense, a fire department or professional technician/inspector is looking for fire hazards. This includes potential hazards to the occupants of the building and systems that aren’t functioning properly. However, it also includes potential hazards to firefighters and/or emergency responders, who would potentially be using the built-in fire protection systems and saving occupants in the case of an emergency situation.
Fire Protection Systems
The fire protection systems that need to be inspected and maintained are the ones you might immediately imagine. An inspector is going to thoroughly inspect all your fire alarms, fire extinguishers, and fire sprinklers to ensure they are working properly and have been properly maintained.
This means making sure all these systems are operating properly and in compliance with the current codes and standards for your city, county, and/or state.
Tests must be performed regularly to ensure the system works as intended and can protect occupants in case of an actual fire or emergency. These tests are almost always performed by third-party testing services: professional fire protection technicians.
Building Egress Systems
Inspection of building egress systems is another crucial aspect of any professional fire inspection. Your inspector will take a look at exit doors, emergency exit signs, and emergency light structures, among other things. This type of inspection can often fall to the fire department.
In case of an emergency, you–and the building’s occupants–need to be able to find your way out of a burning building, and most importantly, exit the building safely and quickly. During their inspection, they make sure emergency exits are cleared for passage and confirm the emergency lighting fixtures work properly. Ensuring exits are clearly marked and usable is the bulk of this part of the fire department inspection.
Knowing When to Choose a Fire Department Inspection or a Professional Fire Safety Technician
Fire Department Home Safety Inspection
There are almost 30,000 fire departments across the United States of America. Of these hard-working men and women, only about 30% are professional, career firefighters, however. In fact, more than half of all firefighters registered in the United States are volunteer firefighters. This is not to say they aren’t well trained or doing a great job in their respective jurisdictions every day. Rather, it’s important to note that the level of training among firefighters is not entirely uniform.
You want to rely on expertise and knowledge you know you can trust because the safety of the people in your facility matters.
In our professional opinion, firefighters are the perfect resource for a fire and life safety inspection in residential buildings–like your own home. Having your fire safety equipment regularly checked by individuals you can trust is incredibly important, and it’s great that we can rely on our local fire departments for this crucial service to the community.
However, on a commercial or industrial scale, fire inspections quickly become much more complicated.
Time for a Professional Fire Inspection
If you’re reading this blog, you probably know that NFPA 101 is an incredibly thorough and complex document. You also probably know NFPA 101 is not a small document. In fact, new amendments are added all the time. Sure, it’s nice to think all our firefighters are always up-to-date with the latest requirements and code changes. But that’s not a reasonable expectation. It’s impossible to expect firefighters to know every code and conduct listed within the document at all times.
Here’s another factor to consider: The vast amounts of volunteer firefighters cannot be aware of every aspect of NFPA 101, and are thus not fully able to employ the codes and conduct it lays out. Volunteer firefighters do know a lot about keeping people safe. And their valiant efforts to protect their communities are incredibly important and impactful. However, they often lack the extracurricular training required to fully inspect and enforce the entirety of NFPA 101. Most volunteers are trained for emergency response–and this is where their focus should be.
For many firefighters, their expertise lies mostly or solely in emergency response. This is an central part of fire safety, but relying on these individuals to perform a perfect fire inspection without all the necessary training simply isn’t feasible. While fire departments’ ability to perform inspections–in addition to emergency response–is extremely helpful, the fire inspection industry is not able to support them with emergency response. We focus our efforts where our expertise lies, in the inspection and maintenance of fire protection systems.
A Professional Eye
The biggest advantage to using a professional fire safety technician to perform a commercial building or facility inspection is that fire protection professionals are specifically trained for this purpose. We know what a violation looks like, we know what complies with the code, and we know what falls short. Professional technicians spend each day identifying “deficiencies”–problems with fire protection systems and providing insight into how to address them. Often, the company you use will also be able to provide service for any issues identified, helping you ensure your systems are functioning properly at all times.
A professional inspection yields an inspection checklist, similar to what the fire department provides. This details any deficiencies or violations, including what should be repaired, fixed, or replaced, and when it needs to be done. But again, the advantage comes with the expertise of a specialized technician.
If the firefighter performing your inspection is unaware of a safety code violation, they won’t be able to tell you about it. While avoiding additional expenditures on your building can be convenient in the short-term, it’s extremely dangerous in the long-term. Overlooked violations can turn into huge safety hazards that put the lives of your building occupants at risk. And, ultimately, improperly maintained fire protection systems also put first responder safety in question when they respond to an emergencies.
Two Sides of the Same Coin
We would like to be extremely clear: We are not trying to speak ill of firefighters or of their capabilities. We need firefighters–and we’re so thankful for their incredible work! Fire inspections are the first part of fire safety and prevention.
We all know fire is unpredictable. Fire inspection and prevention training are important to keep people safe, but sometimes things go wrong. And that’s when we’re glad we can rely on firefighters; they are the professionals when it comes to fighting fires stopping them before they can cause harm and take lives.
More specifically, we rely on firefighters’ great training and expertise. And that’s why you should rely on professional fire technicians to inspect your commercial building space. You want to rely on expertise and knowledge you know you can trust because the safety of the people in your facility matters.
