Five reasons to use an automated fire roll call system

A fire roll call is a vital part of any business’ health and safety protocols in an emergency situation, and needs to be regularly practised in drills.

Some SMEs believe that because they have a small number of staff, a fire roll call isn’t necessary. They “can just look at their assembled staff and recognise missing people”.

As a company with years of experience in attendance management and site security, we know that this attitude can lead to potential disasters, such as overlooking visitors.

The UK Government website says:

You should carry out at least one fire drill per year and record the results. You must keep the results as part of your fire safety and evacuation plan.

https://www.gov.uk/workplace-fire-safety-your-responsibilities/fire-safety-equipment-drills-and-training

Here are five reasons why you should upgrade your fire roll call away from human-operated to digital.

• It minimises human error

According to the Health and Safety Executive website, there are two different types of unintentional errors: a lapse, where an action is not as intended (pressing the wrong button, for example); and an incorrect decision, where someone does the wrong thing, believing it to be correct.

Increased automation of procedures limits the opportunity for lapses to occur, and regular training will help everyone to be aware of the correct action.

With an automated fire roll call system, there’s no need to search through drawers for your old fire register, or to worry whether it’s up to date, or to resort to counting employees on your fingers and wondering whether you’ve muddled employees’ names or not shouted loudly enough.

• It is faster than traditional methods

Upon the fire alarm sounding, our automated fire roll call system will immediately trigger a print-out of an up-to-date list of which employees are currently clocked into the building. This can also be sent via email to the fire marshal or other person in charge.

Our fire roll call app not only gives the marshal an immediate list right there on their phones, but allow the marshall to communicate with anyone ticked “Unaccounted For” via their centrally stored phone number or email.

This is much faster than the usual manual method of locating a register of every single employee and needing to read all the way to the bottom of the list before you can be certain that they are unaccounted for.

• It is more accurate and wide-ranging than traditional systems

As mentioned briefly in the introduction, a pitfall of small businesses knowing all of their staff by sight is that they may get overconfident during a fire drill. All of the full-time employees may be present, but what about the part-time workers? Is it their day off, or are they still inside?

What about contract workers, such as cleaners, or a visitor who is here for a meeting and has ducked aside to use the toilet?

Hopefully you can see that there are many people you might overlook! Our fire roll call system integrates perfectly with our visitor management system, so that everyone who is registered as a visitor is put onto the list. This is many times more reliable than trusting the fire marshal to, for example, remember to grab the visitor sign-in book from reception on their way outside for a fire evacuation.

• It automatically unlocks relevant doors

Our fire roll call system integrates with door controls, so that upon registering the triggering of the fire alarms, all the doors will unlock. This makes it quicker and easier for your employees to exit the building and reach their assigned evacuation point.

There’s no need to worry about keys or codes – although if you have doors that you need to remain closed even in an emergency for security reasons, this can be arranged too.

• It gives you a big-picture overview of the whole procedure

Using either our standard fire roll call system or the new fire roll call app enables you to gain a much better picture of the evacuation across the entire site. The fire roll call app gives you real-time updates on every single employee or visitor’s presence, and the standard system can be set up to do similarly with employees clocking out at muster points.

This means that the efficiency of your fire drill procedures can be easily evaluated afterwards, in a way which is impossible if you are merely reading from a generic register. You can then spot any problems and solve them.

For more information about our automated fire roll call system and how it can be integrated with attendance management and access control systems, please contact us.

Our team will be happy to discuss your requirements, provide online demos and provide you with an accurate quote.