Pandemic Crisis Management: How to Keep Your Facilities Safe during COVID-19

Whether your business is deemed “essential” or “non-essential,” it is critical that you keep your facilities safe during COVID-19 by maintaining your fire and life safety equipment and protocols. Whether you are a building chief, facilities director, or project manager, there are steps you can take right now to ensure your building remains safe and operational until the pandemic is under control. 

In addition to implementing your own measures, you should consider looking into a fire and life safety systems vendor that can assess the quality of existing systems, identify and repair damaged components, recommend upgrades or improvements, and provide real-time monitoring and 24/7 emergency services. 

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First steps to take right now

While hiring a professional fire safety company is the most prudent and advisable measure you can take to protect your business and employees, you can also keep your facilities safe by taking the following steps:

• Daily visual inspections of all systems — First and foremost, you need to perform a visual inspection of all your systems. This means having boots on the ground that can physically inspect sprinklers, alarms, portable fire extinguishers, and kitchen systems when necessary. You should go over our checklist for unattended facilities to ensure you are in compliance with NFPA standards during COVID-19. 
• Read and understand internal policies — Are you fully aware of your company’s internal policies regarding fire and life safety technicians on the premises? Review such policies to ensure they are current, comprehensible, and fully allow emergency service technicians to properly perform their duties.
• Be aware of negative pressure setups that may be in place — Hospitals and healthcare facilities use negative air pressure rooms to prevent infectious diseases from spreading. If your building relies on negative air pressure systems, it is crucial now more than ever that you understand where such systems are, how they operate, and whether they need maintenance. 
• Ensure locations are accessible for emergency services — Need alarms checked? Pumps? Sprinklers? Fire safety technicians cannot work if they cannot enter your facilities. If you need a fire and life safety service vendor to visit your facility during the lockdown, make sure the building is fully accessible.

As our government and brave first responders continue to combat COVID-19, it is important that facilities directors inspect their buildings to ensure fire and life safety systems are maintained and operational. If deficiencies are identified, measures must be taken to ensure your building is up to code and safe. 

Benefits of hiring a fire and life safety systems vendor

Operational managers and building chiefs can perform numerous fire and life safety checks by visually inspecting their systems. However, unless you have a background in fire and life safety systems, you will be unable to fully inspect every component. 

 Some of the benefits of hiring a fire and life safety vendor include:

1. One company handles everything — If you are thinking about hiring a fire and life safety service vendor for monitoring, repairs, new equipment, or maintenance, you should choose one vendor that handles everything as opposed to multiple vendors for each task. This means you make one phone call to one company for all your fire and life safety needs: inspections, repairs, monitoring, installations, and emergencies. Further, using a single vendor will limit exposure to your building and/or employees.
2. Peace of mind — While there are certain checks you can do yourself, the only way to have peace of mind that your systems are fully operational is to have an experienced fire and life safety company service your building. 
3. Service you can trust — Companies like PSI use NICET certified technicians that are well-versed in compliance codes and can help you install new hardware or upgrade existing systems.
4. Service now and after COVID-19 — Fire and life safety companies provide an invaluable service to businesses — during and after — the COVID-19 pandemic. If you don’t have a fire and life safety company managing your systems, now is the time to contact an experienced vendor like PSI.  

Figuring out how to keep your facilities safe during COVID-19 can be frustrating to say the least. Fortunately, with the guidance of an experienced fire and life safety vendor, you can organize, understand, and implement protocols/systems that will protect your business and employees. 

Remember to use the emergency 24/7 service

It is of the utmost importance that facilities directors, building managers, and building chiefs be aware that PSI offers 24/7 emergency services. Need someone to check your building’s systems? Did an alarm go off? Is your panel beeping? Are LEDs flashing? Is a component malfunctioning?

If you hire a fire and life safety service vendor like PSI, you can call our 24/7 emergency service line. This means that if you have a problem with any of your life safety systems, and require emergency assistance, one of our friendly compliance experts can help a) Answer a technical question, b) Diagnose your system issues, c) Determine a service game plan, d) Schedule an onsite service call, and e) bring your panel back to normal condition.

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PSI helps buildings stay safe during COVID-19

Performance Systems Integration (PSI) remains committed to providing schools, property management, hotels, hospitals, and other businesses with trusted fire and life safety services during the COVID-19 pandemic. 

For almost 20 years, we have helped businesses in Oregon and Washington inspect, test, maintain, and service integral fire and life safety systems. Whether you need a new fine mist sprinkler system, or maintenance of your fire alarms, we work diligently to provide you with safety and security. 

Our 24/7 emergency team is standing by and ready to handle any fire and/or life safety system call. For more information on our fire and life safety systems throughout the Pacific Northwest, call our Oregon/SW Washington Office at 503.641.2222, or contact us online.