5 Ways Inspection Makes Fire Response More Efficient
For fire agencies everywhere, inspecting properties within a community is a key role that fulfills not only national, state, and local safety requirements but can actually help increase efficiencies within the fire agency itself. Today’s pre-planning and inspection software makes it easier than ever to record relevant data, and more importantly, access it when needed. This could mean on the firefield or during administrative tasks; in fact, inspection data can benefit an agency on numerous fronts, including:
1. More Efficient Response Plans, Based on Data
The most basic and helpful way that preplanning and inspection helps your fire agency is by giving you detailed insight into your community and its properties. When you get called out for response, the ability to review a property’s detailed information – from number of entrances to hazardous materials onsite to fire suppression systems – can make life and death differences in your response plans. The more knowledge you’re armed with, the better response plans you can make, leading to more successful outcomes for both your team and your community members.
2. Safer Properties with Fewer Violations
They say an ounce of prevention is worth is worth a pound of cure, and the key role of property inspection is to identify and call for a correction to violations. With today’s inspection software, you can easily document violations you see during an inspection and record it to ensure it is corrected during subsequent inspections. Fewer violations mean fewer fire hazards, reducing the risk to your community and to your agency, and decreasing the odds of dangerous emergency response situations.
3. Less Paperwork for Your Team
Fire agency inspectors are notoriously busy, especially in large cities where construction is rampant. Inspectors often face long hours and necessary overtime; any way your agency can make their work more efficient will result in greater job satisfaction and less impact to your overtime budget. One way inspection software can help in this area is by reducing the redundancies and paperwork traditionally associated with the role. No longer should an inspector have to manually transfer over inspection data to another software tool, or from paper notes. Instead, being able to record the required data onsite and automatically sync with all associated servers instantly goes a long way to reducing doubled work.
4. Easier Training for New Inspectors
At times you may need to use newer members of your team to complete property inspections, creating a need for training and education on everything from various codes to report verbiage. Inspection software can now be tailored with available terminology and a step-by-step progressive checklist, ensuring that you are recording your data in a consistent way and not moving on until all required fields are completed. Additionally, a collection of codes, set specifically for your agency’s needs, can make it easy to access helpful information during an actual inspection. All these tools help reduce errors and make your team’s work more complete and efficient.
5. Better Awareness of Your Community
An easily accessible collection of information about your community helps you not only respond more efficiently to emergencies, but also helps you proactively improve community safety. Knowing which areas could benefit from a community outreach program – for example, distributing free smoke alarms or conducting educational outreach for families – can help reduce the overall number of fires in your response area. Historic inspection data can also give you an insight to the commercial properties in your area, including past occupants and violations, giving you better insight into potential hazards.
Making the most of the data you agency collections during inspections benefits your team and your community in countless ways. The ability to access this data quickly and in real-time can make the difference in lives and community losses, as your team can respond with more situational awareness to your next incident.
Learn more about the specific features in pre-planning and inspection software that can save your agency time and money now.