S 2.15 Fire safety inspection

Initiation responsibility: Building Services Manager, Head of IT

Implementation responsibility: Fire Safety Engineer

The construction and use of buildings must comply with all applicable fire protection regulations. These are laid down in DIN and VDE standards and are supplemented by requirements imposed by the building supervision (see also S 1.6 Adherence to fire protection regulations).

Experience shows that once such regulations have been in use in daily operations for a while, people become more and more careless about implementing them and in extreme cases the provisions may be totally ignored. Some examples:

• Escape routes are blocked, e.g. by furniture or stocks of paper.
• Fire doors and smoke protection doors are kept open by wedging.
• Permissible fire loads are exceeded by increasing quantities of cables or as a result of newly-defined uses.
• Fire seals are opened during work and/or are damaged and not repaired properly.
• Smoke alarm systems in the vicinity of "smokers' corners" are deliberately disabled.

Fire safety inspections should be carried out once or twice per year, with or without prior notice.

Since the conduct of employees is not normally determined by malevolent intent, but by operational requirements or convenience, it is inappropriate for a fire safety inspection to be aimed at detecting and punishing offenders. Rather, the identified shortcomings, the corresponding conditions and their causes should be remedied immediately.

Review questions:

• Are fire safety inspections performed regularly?
• Are deficiencies identified during fire safety inspections rectified immediately?