Sprinkler and alarm malfunctions don’t happen every day. But, when they do quick decisions are Official link needed. Ideally, your fire watch policy will provide a plan for acting quickly to ensure your compliance with the regulation.
Building owners have basically two options when it comes to performing fire watches — they can do it themselves by having current employees step in to serve as fire watchers while the system is down, or they can outsource the fire watch tasks to a security company, like Koorsen Fire & Security.
If considering assigning fire watch duties to your employees, it is important to follow the federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) requirements pertaining to fire watches. In addition to requiring detailed training in how to conduct a fire watch, Section 1915.504 requires employers to develop and maintain a current written fire watch policy that specifies the following:
The duties employees are to perform when conducting a fire watch and the equipment they must be provided for this purpose
The personal protective equipment (PPE) that must be made available to them and which they must wear when conducting a fire watch
Before making a decision regarding the use of employees to serve as fire watchers, it may be useful to consider some of the pros and cons of using employees to perform fire watches or outsourcing to a security company. Factors to consider include:
Interruption of normal business activities — Employees cannot conduct a fire watch in addition to their normal duties. This is an important consideration as a fire watch must be conducted continuously during an outage and possibly for an extended period of time. Depending on the roles of these employees in your organization, having them perform fire watch duties can prove very costly in terms of lost productivity. Hiring an outside company to perform a fire watch would eliminate this problem, but there is still a cost involved.
Training and equipment costs — When using employees, there are costs associated with training them on the requirements of a fire watch and providing them with all the required fire safety equipment, communication devices, and PPE to perform them properly. When hiring a security company, you can expect that your fire watchers will arrive with all the necessary training and equipment.
Potential legal liability — Fire watches may or may not be included in a building’s insurance policy. If it isn’t and a fire were to break out, the building owner may be held liable for any damages. Companies that provide fire watch services provide their own insurance, eliminating any potential liability on the part of the building owner.
Considering the benefits that they provide, it may seem that hiring a security company is the obvious choice. This may or may not be the case for your business. The main point here is that it is important to evaluate all of your options when developing your fire watch policy so that it can be implemented quickly in the event of an impairment to your fire sprinkler or alarm systems.
Site Title 