Your job title is Security Director, Director of Corporate Security or Chief Security Officer, yet most likely your role entails more than security. As the economy continues its downward trend, corporations have eliminated new positions, leaving open positions unfilled and combining positions. The person responsible for security is now responsible for much more including fire, life safety and safety. But a security director may not be as familiar with fire safety as they are with security matters.
What exactly is fire and life safety? It’s actually many things that range from fire and explosions, to property and people protection. When we are dealing with buildings, that means ensuring people can get out of a building safely in the event of a fire and limiting the amount of damage that will occur. It involves many hazards such as structure fires, fires in cooking and venting equipment, flammable/combustible gases such as natural gas and propane, flammable/combustible liquids, process hazards, electrical hazards and many, many more. A security director needs to be concerned and informed about many of these issues that will vary from facility to facility. The fire protection needs for a medical facility will be vastly different than the fire protection needs for a college campus. If I were to summarize the basics of fire protection, it would be fire prevention, suppression, detection and egress.