Understanding the NFPA’s Fire and Life Safety Ecosystem™
The National Fire Protection Association (NFPA) developed their Fire & Life Safety Ecosystem as a framework for businesses to minimize risks of damage, injury, and death from preventable hazards. There are eight key elements of the system, and they work in concert to reduce your company’s risk. What are they and how can a fire life safety vendor help you hit these metrics and eliminate fire risk?
What is the NFPA’s Fire and Life Safety Ecosystem?
Is your company’s fire and life safety protection a patchwork of disparate systems? Unintegrated safety systems can lead to inefficiencies that increase risk — or fail to sufficiently decrease it. The NFPA developed their Fire & Life Safety Ecosystem to provide guidelines for bringing everything together into a more efficient and effective framework. According to the NFPA, failure of any one of the ecosystem’s eight cogs could spell disaster for your organization.
According to the NFPA, fire and life safety — for the community and the people and businesses within it — isn’t the sole responsibility of any one person or entity. It is rather the collective responsibility of several entities working in concert. Each factor of the NFPA’s ecosystem contributes to a complete, systemic safety net.
Government responsibility. Local, state, and federal governments are responsible for creating fire and life safety standards and public policies. Government safety codes — and code enforcement agencies — create a structure for standardizing and regulating fire, electrical, building, and life safety.
Development and use of current codes. Experts from around the world are responsible for creating minimum safety standards. These fire life safety regulatory rules protect people, property, and the community. Standards are regularly reviewed, updated, and enforced to ensure safety.
Referenced standards. These standards stretch across companies and geographic boundaries. The referenced standards should include international building codes and international fire codes covering fire, life safety, building, and electrical requirements.
Investment in safety. Every organization should invest in safety standards. It is only by working together within this ecosystem that individuals and organizations help to eliminate risk.
Skilled workforce. Leveraging a skilled workforce — trained in the latest safety standards — helps organizations achieve code compliance and a more productive work environment with reduced risk of loss, injury, or death.
Code compliance. Code compliance is a critical component of the NFPA ecosystem. Homes and workplaces are only as safe as the level of code compliance before, during, and after every new construction project. Code compliance is essential to achieving fire and life safety goals.
Preparedness and emergency response. First responders must be properly prepared to protect their communities. At the same time, their communities — and the people and businesses within them — must continue to prepare for emergencies and do what they can to prevent safety hazards.
Informed public. None of these systems work properly unless the public has access to necessary information for keeping themselves, their businesses, and their communities safe from harm. An informed public is a prepared public.
Together, these component parts form a prevention-based safety infrastructure for reducing unnecessary loss.
How do fire life safety partnerships help meet NFPA recommendations?
Fire life safety system integration is essential to the efficient operation requirements described in the NFPA’s ecosystem framework. A professional partner can work with legacy systems and recommend appropriate upgrades to create a seamless safety infrastructure for more efficient protection — and less risk. An experienced, expert partner can help your business:
Maintain compliance with the latest safety codes and standards whether you’re looking to install new systems or seeking upgrades, maintenance, and integration for existing systems.
Stay up to date with the latest equipment and preventive maintenance strategies to reduce risk and manage costs.
Remain response ready with state-of-the-art equipment and expert installation and maintenance services to protect both people and property.
For more than 40 years, TRL Systems has been a leader in the design, installation, integration, and maintenance of the systems you need to protect your company and its people. Contact us today at 1-800-266-1392 or via email at fire@TRLsystems.com.