Keeping a flame-free office: fire safety tech for your business
Flames are the death knell for any business property. They’re the cancerous spread of smoke and ash and crumbling plasterboard and melted plastic and, like a tornado tearing through your life, they’ll leave you with little more than a charred pile of bricks and an insurance payout.
Some companies recover from a burnt-out building, but around 70 per cent of them fail completely (although that statistic is debated).
Once their building has suffered the fate of a fire, a businessperson will lose all their solid assets in one fell swoop.
It might seem like an unlikely prospect, but firefighters in the UK are called to more than 200,000 emergencies every year – and one of those emergencies could easily be your business up in flames.
The best step to take, as you might imagine, is to ensure that a fire remains unlikely in your workplace.
With that in mind, we’ve come up with a few tips and tricks that’ll stop your business being reduced to ashes. Study them carefully and enjoy a flame-free office.
The right steel
Your plasterboard might appear to be impenetrable, at least in your day-to-day operations. It stands proud and beige, as stoic as a slab of concrete or a proud military general. But when faced with a lick of flame, that once faultless plasterboard will crumble like a slab of butter placed in a furnace.
Your walls need more protection if they’re going to withstand an uncontrollable blaze in your workplace.
Our best recommendation is Durasteel, a blast-proof covering that’s placed in between your wall cavities to provide ultimate protection. This particular form of fire protection has been tested for quality for over 50 years and can guarantee you up to four hours of fire protection – giving you plenty of time to call the emergency services.
Exit point audible notification
Imagine being trapped amidst the terrifying crack and snarl of a raging fire.
Smoke billows around you. You can’t see more than a few centimetres in front of your face. Electrical wires snap and pop all around you. The workplace you once knew like the back of your hand has been transformed beyond all recognition, distorted and gnarled by the wicked hand of flames.
Enter exit point audible notification, a new technology that aims to make locating a fire exit a lot easier. This smart piece of tech aims to guide you to a suitable exit via the use of sound cues. Although it was originally intended as helpful for those who are partially sighted, it could save the life of anyone in your business.
Got any other suggestions on how you could protect your business from fire? Then let us know in the comments below.
Photo credit: Rick Cowan
