Protecting businesses from fire has, and likely always will be, a top priority. Fire can quickly destroy a business’s premises, and can lead to injury or even loss of life.
Luckily, while fire itself hasn’t changed much in recent years, we now have a lot more ways of limiting the risk it poses. If you’re thinking about fire protection for your business, let’s take a look at where to start with identifying some modern solutions.
Risk assessment
Before you look for solutions, you’ll need to conduct a thorough risk assessment. The London Fire Brigade have some excellent resources, outlining your legal responsibilities and how you should go about meeting them.
What you find in your risk assessment will determine, to a certain extent at least, the approach that you take going forward. For example, in some cases, it may be beneficial to have specific protected areas to protect valuable assets from fire damage, whereas in others, this may not be necessary.
Practical fire protection technologies
Based on the findings of your risk assessment, you may wish to integrate one or more of the following fire protection solutions from a provider such as LBS Group.
Fire curtains
Fire curtains can play an important role in your overall fire protection strategy. They’re made from a special kind of fire-resistant fabric, and are designed to slow and control how spoke and fire spread throughout a building. They’re typically designed to automatically deploy in the event of a fire, and can be particularly useful in large, open spaces that fire would otherwise be able to rush through.
Fire safety shutters
Fire safety shutters operate according to a similar principle to fire curtains, but due to their different material, they’re typically a little more substantial. They can be installed in strategic locations, so that you can slow the spread of fire throughout a building, allowing the creation of strategically protected zones that might contain valuable stock or assets.
Fire safety doors
Finally, fire-resistant doors are something that should be present in all businesses, including in residential buildings. They’re designed to compartmentalise fires, slowing down the rate at which they spread.
Fire safety doors typically need to withstand certain temperatures for a set amount of time – while they won’t keep the fire back forever, they should create enough time for the fire services to attend the scene and get things under control.
Not only will they limit the amount of property damage that occurs as a result of the fire, but they might also save people’s lives as well.
Fire protection isn’t something that you want to overlook in the modern business environment. Based on the findings of a comprehensive fire risk assessment, you can implement one or more of the practical solutions listed above.
It’s important that you also implement an advanced fire detection system that automatically alerts the fire brigade, potentially linked to a sprinkler system as well. Not only will these systems potentially save your business from coming to harm – but they could save your clients and employees from coming to harm as well.
