Maintaining Essential Safety Measures in Buildings

About this course.

Essential safety measures are the fire and life-safety systems, equipment and building features that an occupied building relies on to protect people and property in an emergency, and to allow safe evacuation. They include active systems such as detection, alarm and sprinkler systems, and passive features such as fire doors and fire-resisting walls. They must be maintained because they are called upon rarely but must work without fail when they are, and because equipment quietly degrades — batteries fade, seals perish, valves seize, pumps lose prime, and doors fall out of adjustment — so a measure that was compliant on the day it was installed can silently become useless years later unless it is inspected, tested and serviced.

The term "essential safety measures" is used in some jurisdictions, while others speak of "essential services", "essential fire safety measures" or simply the building's fire safety systems. The label matters less than the idea behind it: these are the parts of a building that exist specifically to keep people safe when something goes wrong, and that a community relies upon in the worst moments. Because their purpose is protective, the law treats them differently from ordinary building elements. It is not enough for them to have been designed and installed correctly at the outset; they must be kept in a state where they will perform to the standard they were installed to meet, for as long as the building is occupied.