Fire Safety Practices For Small Businesses – Here Is What You Should Know

Without proper fire safety measures in place, a fire in a commercial building can turn into a life-threatening incident and cause severe damage to the property. Hence, following fire-safety rules and equipping the workplace with appropriate fire protection measures is imperative for modern business owners.

In small businesses, handling fire safety relies on the owner; however, the employees can play their roles too. Failure to adhere to these legal & ethical duties can lead to legal fees or catastrophic fire accidents.

Installing active and passive fire protection measures in London is the right way to start making your small business ‘fire-safety compliant.’ However, that is not the only step. There are several steps small businesses need to take to ensure adequate fire protection.

In this blog, we will look at five vital steps to follow for keeping your small business, property, employees, and customers safe from fire hazards.

How To Keep Your Business Safe & Secure From Fire Hazards

Place Fire Exits

While evacuating the building during a fire hazard, your clients and employees will rely highly on signed exits and exit doors. Ideally, your business premises should have two emergency exits that are easy to reach and allow occupants to escape safely.

These doors should be unblocked, and the exit doors should be assigned proper signage at all times. Nothing except alarms systems and signs should be placed into or near the exit doors.

Install Fire Protection Measures

A professional fire active and passive fire protection survey company will help you determine all the potential risks and suggest the essential active and passive fire protection measures for your premises.

Some of the most common active and passive fire protection equipment includes:

• Active fire protection – Fire alarms, fire extinguishers, sprinkler systems, steam detectors.
• Passive fire protection – Fire doors, curtains, fire-resisting paint, walls, fire-resistant ductwork, etc.

Attach Fire-Safety Signage

Once you have installed all the necessary fire protection measures, you can equip them with appropriate signage. Following are the signage that is crucial for meeting legal fire-safety compliance requirements.

• Signs for fire extinguishers – these should be placed near the extinguishers.
• Fire exits – all the exits should be marked with boards/signs visible in the dark.
• Assembly points signage.
• Fire alarms signs.
• The path that is to be followed while evacuating the premises. This will allow the occupants to get out safely in an orderly manner and prevent any panic.

Lastly, a map of the premises should also be added along with signs so that the occupants can know where the fire safety equipment is installed throughout the building at the time of a breakout.

Prepare An Evacuation Plan

Once the building is equipped with the required preventive equipment, now is the time to plan an evacuation plan for fire hazards. This plan will include the following details:

• Which exit routes and fire protection measures are installed in the building.
• Details of personnel responsible for fire safety.
• An in-depth procedure to evacuate the installation quickly and effectively in case of a fire incident.
• Rules & regulations to be followed in office premises to ensure complete fire safety.

Conducting regular fire drills is also an integral part of the evacuation plan. Employees can use these to practice evacuation procedures even if there isn’t a real emergency. Ensure that everyone is present and that all necessary lockdown protocols are followed during drills so that your personnel are fully prepared in the event of a real fire.

The fire drill procedure and the intervals between two drills should be determined while planning an evacuation procedure and shared with the concerned individuals.

Educate All The Employees

The next step of optimizing fire protection for your small business is ’employee training’. All small businesses should provide proper fire-safety training to their employees and educate them about appropriate fire-safety practices to follow in an emergency.

Moreover, the employees should also know how to identify potential fire hazards and report potential ignition sources to the management. This education also involves planning for an evacuation plan, assigning fire-safety responsibility, and framing communication plans.

Carry Out Regular Checks

The last and one of the most critical fire-safety practices that small businesses should follow is regularly checking fire protection equipment.

The responsibility of inspections and surveys should be assigned to concerned personnel when planning for installation. These individuals should coordinate with your Passive Fire Protection London company and schedule the inspection of fire equipment.

During these assessments, potential fire dangers should be identified, and the appropriate procedures to address them should be taken.

Concluding Thoughts

Hopefully, all the small business owners can fully understand the importance of fire protection and the necessary practices for ensuring it. For detailed information on passive fire protection in London, fire surveys, or installation of tools for fire protection London, get in touch with the experts of CA Fire Protection today.