A Spotlight on Waking Watch
A Spotlight on Waking Watch
The South West Procurement Alliance (SWPA) and Fire and Evacuation Services have partnered together to highlight significant fire safety expertise and knowledge, in order to support the Public Sector, Local Authorities and Housing Associations. Fire and Evacuation Services are appointed to SWPA’s Fire Safety (FS2) Framework, providing a Waking Watch service throughout the South West.
What is Waking Watch?
Waking Watch is a fire safety service provided by fully licensed and regulated fire safety organisations. Fire safety professionals physically patrol a building or property for the amount of time required, to ensure there are no fires or fire hazards. In the event of a suspected fire hazard or fire, the trained fire safety professionals are able to detect fires, raise alarms and ensure the evacuation of any people and appropriate items within the building itself.
The Waking Watch service provides the ultimate fire safety solution, as the fire safety professionals are physically in-situ to prevent a fire, or implement fire safety procedures to efficiently and effectively save lives, and preserve the safety and structure of a property. Additionally, if a fire is detected, the fire safety professionals can react with immediate effect to the situations and ensure all fire safety protocols are implemented, and people are kept safe.
When is Waking Watch needed?
Waking Watch is a service that can be utilised in any building, to ensure the utmost fire safety for the occupants and the property itself. However, Waking Watch is most commonly used, and most useful, in vacant buildings where fires fire hazards can go unnoticed, along with building sites and other project sites, where continuous refurbishment and building works mean that new fires and fire hazards could present themselves at any time.
Who needs Waking Watch?
Anyone can utilise Waking Watch as a service, but it is most useful and mostly utilised by the public sector, local housing associations, Government properties, local authorities, healthcare and education buildings, as these often need closer surveillance in order to protect multiple occupants and their properties.
Additionally, the Waking Watch service is popular amongst the public sector during refurbishments, new building works and renovations, particularly if still used by occupants or the public.
How does Waking Watch help?
The Waking Watch service can help in many ways. If for example, the Waking Watch service is implemented in a library which is open to the public 24 hours a day and 7 days a week, the fire safety professionals on waking watch not only maintain the fire safety within the building, but they can also remove hazards and respond to a fire immediately. The fire hazards within this building could change and evolve throughout the building, depending on how the property is utilised by the public and at what time. The Waking Watch service can ensure that fire detection is immediate, along with sounding the alarm and overseeing a safe and procedural evacuation strategy.
After this has been successfully implemented, the Waking Watch service is then on hand to liaise with the fire brigade on arrival, explain the situation, the layout of the building, and support any evacuees who have been removed from the building.
Fire and Evacuation Services provides a Waking Watch service and take immense pride in pioneering the role of Evacuation Management, use this link for more information.
