How Should Your Business Prepare for a Fire Marshal Inspection

Most businesses can expect a fire marshal inspection to occur in the workplace once per year. While this may seem routine to some businesses, that’s not always the right approach to take.

After all, fire marshal inspections are a key part of fire safety. The good news is that if you can pass a fire marshal inspection with flying colors, it usually means that you are doing everything right with regard to fire safety in the workplace. With that in mind, we wanted to share the best ways for your business to prepare for a fire marshal inspection and stay ahead of the curve with regard to workplace fire safety.

Keep Track of Fire Threats

Ideally, every workplace will have a list of all safety hazards and fire threats, as well as a list of what is being done to mitigate those threats. While a fire marshal may not ask to see this list, having one will force a company to be aware of fire risks and take proactive steps to prevent those risks from causing fires.

Show Mitigation of Fire Hazards

If there are specific fire hazards in the workplace like flammable substances or gasoline pumps, make sure you are prepared to show the fire marshal how you mitigate those threats. Make sure hazardous substances are being stored properly and that proper steps are being taken to reduce the threat of known fire hazards. If this isn’t being done, a fire marshal will be able to spot it right away.

Collect Previous Inspection Reports

To make sure your business is prepared for the fire marshal, gather inspection reports from previous fire marshal visits. These reports should help let you know if you had previous issues during fire marshal inspections. The last thing you want is to keep getting cited for the same problems year after year. Gather these reports to help make sure you don’t repeat previous mistakes and can show the fire marshal that you are continuously improving your approach to fire safety.

Show Proof of Service on Safety Systems

Every workplace has fire safety systems in place, including sprinkler systems, fire alarms, and the presence of fire extinguishers. The trick is to show that you are keeping up to date on the servicing and maintenance of these protection systems. For instance, can you prove that your fire extinguishers have been inspected recently? Have you run a proper test of your fire alarms? If there is paperwork that shows you have kept up to date on these fire safety tasks, you’ll want to show the fire marshal that you’re ahead of the game.

Keep Halls and Emergency Exits Clear

This might seem like a minor detail, but it’s something that a fire marshal will check. In the event of a fire, cluttered hallways or blocked emergency exits can threaten everyone’s safety. It’s also an easy problem for a fire marshal to spot. Of course, it’s good practice to always keep halls and exits clear. But it’s even more important to make sure this is the case before a fire marshal inspection.

Test Emergency Signs

Last but not least, it’s important to make sure all emergency signs that will be useful in the event of a fire are working. This might seem like a minor detail, but it’s something that will be checked by a fire marshal. It’s also something that should be easy to correct if your emergency signs aren’t functioning.

Integrate Fire Safety into Workplace Safety System

Nobody can deny the importance of workplace fire safety. However, it would be easier to manage if it were integrated into your company’s workplace safety system. This is why the software solutions from EHS Insight are a great fit for any company. Our software is designed to put every part of workplace safety onto one platform. This means training, communication, and even compliance activities like fire marshal inspections are all integrated into one system so that no detail related to safety gets lost in the shuffle.

When you’re ready to implement the best safety management system available, let us know and we can have our software up and running in no time.