Deal’s Consulting has developed a new 3 hour class for management employees who may need additional information about their building’s fire and life safety equipment and to help them to understand their role and responsibility when meeting the fire department in the event of a fire, fire alarm, elevator entrapment or medical emergency. This review should serve as a refresher for those who have been properly trained in days past.
The Fire Code Amendments (Life Safety Standard (LSB) #7 and #24) refers to many trainings that are required in High-rise and Midrise Atrium Buildings in the City of Houston to prepare the building’s management staff and/or occupants for a fire emergency. Proper training is required to obtain and/or maintain approval for the Fire Marshal’s Approved Fire Safety Plan. In some buildings, management employees have not been properly trained and/or may need additional information.
Three of these required trainings are:
- A consultation with upper management (required every 2 years)
- A high-rise or midrise atrium certification class (required every 5 years)
- A supervised fire drill (required every 6 months thereafter)
In the basic consultation, fire class and during the fire drill, information is provided to upper management to help the Fire Safety Director, Building Manager and Building Owner properly train their employees who are staffed and/or contracted.
The management employees responsible for meeting the fire department upon their arrival will require many more hours of training than other employees, such as the housekeeper, porter, receptionist and etc., because they are required to answer questions when asked by the firefighters during an emergency.
The person appointed by the building owner as the one in charge of the building must ensure the following have been properly trained:
1. The answering service or PBX (in hotels)
2. The monitoring service
3. The assistant fire safety directors
4. Those who will meet and assist the fire department must be trained basically about each buildings fire and life safety equipment
5. All of the building engineers
6. All the security officers
7. The administrative assistant and others who answer the phone for the management office
8. Housekeeping
9. The garage personnel
10. The porters
11. The concierge
12. And all other employees that work for the building owner and management company who are staff and/or contracted
Some of the items covered in this new special review class are:
- Detailed questions about the building’s fire and life safety equipment
- Five things management employees are required to do during a fire or fire alarm
- Some elevator information
- Basic elevator fire service
- Elevator independent service
- Some of the fire plan procedures
- Some hard questions management may be asked by the Fire Department
- Reasons why employees do not respond to the fire floor
- Talking on the public address system
- Approved pre-recorded messages
- How to help the Fire Department during a medical emergency
- Tour of building’s fire control room
- Very specific, detailed questions about the Building’s Fire and Life Safety Equipment in the Fire Control Room
- Contents of the fire depository box
- Basic emergency generator questions
- Basic Standpipe and sprinkler questions
- The fire department’s evacuation location outside of the building
- Etc.
This class is similar to the 3 hour classes that I have taught (when requested by some District Fire Chief’s) to firefighters at the fire station about pre-fire planning, conducting high-rise surveys and buildings fire and life safety systems in multistory buildings as well as questions they should ask, important items they may need during a fire emergency and the role of the management employees who meet them during fire and other emergencies.
I will conduct this new 3 hour class, Building Fire & Life Safety Systems, Emergency Procedures and Pre-fire Planning & Review, on site for $500 per class. Some building managers have requested two classes, one in the morning and one in the afternoon to enable half the employees to attend the class, while the other half are taking care of the concerns of the building.
If you have any questions, please contact me. And feel free to share this information with other building managers.
Thank you