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Back to Basics is a weekly feature that highlights important but possibly overlooked information that any EHS professional should know. This week, we examine inspection, testing, and maintenance of fire protection systems.

If there’s a fire in your facility, sprinkler systems can make a big difference in terms of reducing the chance of dying, as well as preventing property damage. But this depends on whether your sprinkler system has been properly designed, installed, and maintained. This puts an emphasis on the importance of Inspection, Testing, and Maintenance (ITM) of water-based fire protection systems.

The National Fire Protection Association (NFPA) recently wrote about this in a blog post, focusing on its NFPA 25, Standard for the Inspection, Testing, and Maintenance of Water-Based Fire Protection Systems. NFPA 25’s requirements are designed to ensure “a reasonable degree of protection for life and property from fire through minimum” ITM methods for water-based fire protection systems.

In addition to inspecting and testing system components, the NFPA says you should evaluate factors that affect system performance, including:

The NFPA post mentions four areas of concern to maintain the proper level of protection for sprinkler systems, including:

Another advancement that can prove helpful is automated inspection and testing, which mimics what used to be a manual process and produces the same outcome, according to the NFPA. For example, a sensor on a fire pump housing that records the temperature during testing can get the same results as a person measuring the temperature manually. However, there are some inspections and tests that require the presence of a qualified person.

You can also use data collection and analysis on fire protection systems to determine whether there can be a change in the required ITM frequencies, as well as to determine whether real-time monitoring of the equipment can be used to detect an upcoming system failure.

You can learn more about ITM of water-based fire protection systems on November 16 at the NFPA Conference series.

The Hazard Communication Standard (HCS) requires pictograms on labels to alert users of the chemical hazards to which they may be exposed. Each pictogram consists of a symbol on a white background framed within a red border and represents a distinct hazard(s). The pictogram on the label is determined by the chemical hazard classification.

Do your employees know how to handle hazardous materials safely? Here are 11 basic rules all employees who handle hazardous materials should know and follow.

Why reinvent the wheel when there are so many ready-made safety observances to link up to? The National Safety Council (NSC) publishes an annual list of safety meeting topics. Here are some highlights.

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