by Jimmy Snowden
You can’t talk about fire protection without mentioning the l-word: liability. Our mission in fire protection is to protect life and property. But with such high stakes, liability is always a concern. If and when tragedy strikes, insurance and legal authorities determine who is liable—and has to pay. While you’re protecting your customers, you should also be mindful of how you’re protecting your business.
Tracking Deficiencies from Identification to Resolution
Staying on top of deficiencies is critical to protecting your customers. But it’s not always a simple task to actually resolve deficiencies once you’ve identified them. Sometimes, customers are reluctant to pay for the materials and labor required to fix a problem. Working fire protection systems are like insurance: You don’t need it until you do. It can be difficult, especially when repairs are complicated and expensive, for building owners to be motivated to resolve their deficiency.
Sometimes, your customers are just busy, and the proposal falls through the cracks. You’re responsible for notifying your customers about a deficiency. But your customer is responsible for ensuring it’s resolved. You can support that effort, but ultimately, it’s up to them.
Track deficiencies from identification to resolution, protect your customers, and shield your business with Inspect Point.
Why Audit Trails Matter
Audit trails for deficiencies your business identifies during regular inspections are critical. Not only is it essential for follow-through to protect your customers’ lives and property, but it’s also a matter of protecting your business. An audit trail is proof that your business 1) conducted the inspection in compliance with AHJ requirements, 2) noted the deficiency, 3) notified the customer, and 4) followed up on the deficiency in an earnest attempt to resolve the issue. Put simply, deficiency audit trails are proof that your business has done its part.
Audit trails help you better keep up with your customers’ needs and ensure you’ve done everything possible to prevent loss of life and damage. Beyond helping you resolve deficiencies, audit trails protect your company from liability. So, when does an audit trail actually come into play?
In Case of Fire
We’re in fire protection. Obviously, that means we work to protect our customers from fire. In case of a fire at one of your customers’ properties, you need to have sufficient documentation showing it was not caused by negligence on the part of your company.
Let’s say you identify a system deficiency in an inspection, note it on the report, and provide a quote for service. You can’t control whether your customer accepts your proposal or decides to get the deficiency repaired by another company. After enough time and follow-ups, at some point, you’ve done all you can. The onus is on your customer to properly maintain their systems. A deficiency audit trail helps limit your business’s liability for the damages—even if the cause of the fire is tied to a deficiency you identified.
In Case of Damage from Neglected Systems
Fires aren’t the only cause of damage that comes from improperly maintained systems. In terms of property damage, water can often be just as destructive as fire. Sprinkler or suppression systems that aren’t properly maintained can malfunction and cause serious problems for a customer’s building and the property held inside.
I’ve seen litigation against fire protection companies following water damage from improperly maintained systems. Consider a hypothetical scenario: A records management company with a warehouse full of paper records has a corroded coupling on their sprinkler system. If this issue were noted on an inspection report but not addressed, the system could fail, flooding the facility and causing millions of dollars in damages.
In such cases, the insurance company might claim fault on the part of the fire protection business. I’ve seen these exact sorts of scenarios play out. An effective and accessible audit trail provides peace of mind, ensuring your business can demonstrate it fulfilled its responsibilities with the proof needed to protect itself.
In Case of Risk to Occupancy Permit
There are still other risks that come with unresolved deficiencies. Jurisdictional compliance is a big deal. If a deficiency is found during a routine or surprise fire department inspection, your customer risks losing their occupancy permit. That means they have to stop operations, leading to lost revenue. Nobody wants that.
More than likely, if this happens with one of your customers, they’ll come to you with a sense of urgency: “Why haven’t you fixed the deficiency?” Your audit trail allows you to point back to the steps you’ve previously taken in attempts to address and resolve the deficiency. While you obviously can and should do everything you can to prevent your customer from losing their occupancy permit, you can prove your business is not at fault for the problem and resolve the deficiency based on your schedule and availability.
In Protection of Lives & Property
Finally, and most importantly, keeping track of your efforts to resolve a deficiency is a record that your company has done everything possible to prevent tragedy. Fire protection businesses exist to proactively address fire risks, saving lives and preventing property damage. An audit trail proves you take that mission seriously and have done so with the deficiencies you’ve identified and the resulting proposals for corrective actions.
A Good Audit Trail
What does a good deficiency audit trail look like? To be effective, you need a record of every activity your business takes to resolve a deficiency. From the initial identification to sending a quote for repairs to follow-ups. This can be difficult—if not impossible—to accurately accomplish with traditional pen and paper methods or even with general field service management software platforms.
Inspect Point has built-in deficiency management capabilities that clearly show every activity related to a recorded deficiency. From the moment it’s noted in an inspection to the moment it’s resolved, you can see every related action and customer communication. There’s no risk that an action won’t be recorded, and you’ll always be able to find the records within seconds.
Automatic, easy, and accessible audit trails keep your customers and your business safe.
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