What Fire Protection Engineers Do For Your Business Establishment

When you own a business, regardless of the type, it is important that you consider the safety of all your employees and any clients or customers you may have while they are in your establishment. Part of this involves making sure that the building is able to prevent, mitigate, and control any fires that break out in the building. Whether the fire started in your restaurant's kitchen, you have an electrical fire in your offices, or the fire started or grew from some outside source, you need to keep everyone as safe as possible. Fire protection engineers are able to design a system that will ensure the best possible safety scenarios for you.

Prevent

One of the first steps is to try to prevent a fire or its spreading as much as possible. This will include installing sprinklers, fire suppression systems, and smoke alarms as well as making sure there are enough easily accessible fire extinguishers placed around the establishment. 

Mitigate

The engineers take care of placement and installation; however, it is your job to make sure that everyone is trained on the proper use of all the equipment. You also need to provide for regular maintenance of everything. Together with the engineer, you will go through the inside and outside of your establishment to look for things that might start a fire. You can then devise ways to make sure those areas are properly protected.

Control

If a fire should ever break out in or near your building, the first thing is to try to get it under control using the devices in place for prevention. However, sometimes the fire is not noticed in time or grows too quickly to be easily controlled. Fire protection engineers will inspect your building and devise ways to control a fire that is beyond your prevention systems. Generally, they find ways to route the fire away from the inside of the building. This could include having special doors put in place that will keep the fire from spreading in that direction as well as vents and/or ducts that will open and close to try to steer the fire toward the fresh air it needs.

It is crucial you and your employees know and obey the safety rules put in place for a fire. Get everyone out of the building, initiate any fire prevention, mitigation, and control devices, even if it is just a small fire, and contact the fire department. It may be something that is out before the professionals show up, but it is always best, and the safest option, to let them come in and make sure it is not going to flare up again. Everyone's safety depends on it.

Share