10 Reasons to Work With One Vendor for Facility Fireproofing Maintenance

Every busi­ness should have fire­proof­ing in place. Whether you are ini­tial­ly set­ting up the fire­proof­ing or main­tain­ing it, it is smart to have a sin­gle ven­dor for all your fire­proof­ing needs. Doing so will ensure your facil­i­ty is fire­proofed to the high­est stan­dards, as well as deliv­er con­ve­nience and savings.

Explore some of the most impor­tant rea­sons to choose a sin­gle ven­dor for all of your facil­i­ty fire­proof­ing main­te­nance needs.

What is the Pur­pose of Fireproofing?

Before get­ting into the rea­sons to work with just one fire­proof­ing ven­dor, refresh your mem­o­ry on why you need fire­proof­ing in the first place. There are mul­ti­ple answers to the ques­tion, ​“What is the pur­pose of fire­proof­ing,” as it deliv­ers numer­ous ben­e­fits.

Fire­proof­ing Increas­es Your Facility’s Resis­tance to Fire

The biggest rea­son to hire fire­proof con­trac­tors is their ser­vices will improve your building’s resis­tance to fire.

Fire­proof­ing Min­i­mizes Oper­a­tional Interruptions

By improv­ing your facility’s abil­i­ty to resist fire, you min­i­mize the down­time a fire would cause. In the best-case sce­nario, crit­i­cal con­trol sys­tems will remain unaf­fect­ed by a fire that breaks out, and allow you to con­tin­ue oper­a­tions while scal­ing down. Ide­al­ly, your fire­proof paint will also pro­tect your equip­ment, enabling you to main­tain oper­a­tions in areas far from the fire. Of course, you do this only after a quick pause to ensure the fire is ful­ly extinguished.

Fire­proof­ing Min­i­mizes Expens­es Fol­low­ing a Fire

The pro­tec­tive pow­er of your fire­proof­ing efforts will also reduce the amount of dam­age to your build­ing, equip­ment, and any mate­ri­als or prod­ucts with­in it. This, in turn, reduces the addi­tion­al expens­es caused by a fire.

Fire­proof­ing Pre­vents Injuries

One of the most impor­tant advan­tages of stop­ping a fire or reduc­ing its spread is min­i­miz­ing the risk of injuries. After all, the fur­ther and faster a fire spreads, the greater the risk to your employ­ees. You don’t want any­one to get hurt. More­over, pre­vent­ing injuries pro­tects your com­pa­ny finan­cial­ly from claims and pre­vents poten­tial dam­age to your busi­ness’ reputation.

Fire­proof­ing Helps You Meet Indus­tri­al Requirements

In addi­tion to the ben­e­fits above, many busi­ness­es are legal­ly required to have a cer­tain lev­el of fire­proof­ing in place. You must meet the require­ments of OSHA and the Nation­al Fire Pro­tec­tion Acad­e­my (NFPA). There are also var­i­ous fed­er­al, state, and local Fire Code require­ments regard­ing fire­proof­ing. Because of these laws, if you don’t have ade­quate fire­proof­ing in place, you could face legal penal­ties, includ­ing fines.

With a bet­ter under­stand­ing of the pur­pose of fire­proof­ing, it’s time to look at the var­i­ous rea­sons to use one ven­dor instead of sev­er­al dif­fer­ent fire­proof con­trac­tors.

10 Rea­sons to Use One Ven­dor Instead of Sev­er­al Dif­fer­ent Fire­proof Contractors

1. You Don’t Have to Find Mul­ti­ple Com­pa­nies That Meet Your Requirements

One of the biggest advan­tages of choos­ing a sin­gle ven­dor for your fire­proof­ing needs is you won’t have to go through the has­sle of find­ing and screen­ing mul­ti­ple ven­dors. Before you choose a fire­proof­ing con­trac­tor, check their rep­u­ta­tion, licens­ing, cus­tomer ser­vice, and pric­ing. This can take a great deal of time, but there is no need to go through the same process more than once, as you can hire a sin­gle fire­proof­ing com­pa­ny that meets all your needs.

2. You Have a Sin­gle Contact

When you work with a sin­gle ven­dor, you also only have one point of con­tact, so regard­less of the type of fire­proof­ing main­te­nance request­ed, you always con­tact the same ven­dor. This saves you valu­able time of retriev­ing con­tact infor­ma­tion for var­i­ous ven­dors and con­firm­ing which one pro­vides a spe­cif­ic service.

3. Mul­ti­ple Ven­dors Don’t Have to Coordinate

If you have mul­ti­ple fire­proof­ing con­trac­tors, they must coor­di­nate with one anoth­er to reduce inter­fer­ence and opti­mize projects. You may also have to assign some­one on your team to coor­di­nate among them. For instance, this will be cru­cial for ensur­ing fire­proof paint is applied in a time­ly man­ner and all main­te­nance sched­ules are met. After all, what hap­pens if one ven­dor notices an issue that falls under the scope of anoth­er? They won’t fix the issue them­selves but will need to inform the provider concerned.

How­ev­er, with a sin­gle ven­dor, you need only con­cern your­self with inter­nal ven­dor com­mu­ni­ca­tion. Even bet­ter, your cho­sen fire­proof­ing com­pa­ny already has an inter­nal sys­tem in place that works for them. This will ensure there are no com­mu­ni­ca­tion gaps.

4. Mis­com­mu­ni­ca­tion Won’t Lead to an Unpro­tect­ed Area

One of the biggest risks of hav­ing mul­ti­ple fire­proof­ing con­trac­tors is if an area is left unpro­tect­ed. You don’t want to be in a posi­tion where each one of your ven­dors assumes anoth­er ven­dor applied fire­proof­ing or fire-stop­ping prod­ucts to a par­tic­u­lar area. This would leave the area vul­ner­a­ble to a fire and put you at risk of legal issues. Mis­com­mu­ni­ca­tion is not the only poten­tial rea­son for unpro­tect­ed areas with mul­ti­ple fire­proof­ing ven­dors. What if you sim­ply for­get to assign an area to a ven­dor? Or what if a ven­dor notices an issue in an area for which they are not respon­si­ble but decides not to get involved because it isn’t their responsibility?

5. Every­thing Is Held to the Same Standards

When you work with a sin­gle fire­proof­ing ven­dor, you can trust that every­thing will be com­plet­ed with the same stan­dards. If you work with dif­fer­ent com­pa­nies, you would have to check var­i­ous con­tracts to see the stan­dards each provider meets. This could lead to some areas with few­er fire pro­tec­tions in place than others.

6. The Ven­dor Will Ful­ly Under­stand and Man­age Your Fire­proof­ing System

The pre­vi­ous points share a com­mon theme – hav­ing a sin­gle ven­dor gives you a com­pa­ny that ful­ly under­stands and man­ages your sys­tem. They will know the ins and outs of your facility’s fire pre­ven­tion mea­sures, and will be able to track the main­te­nance needs and oth­er require­ments relat­ed to it. This com­plete under­stand­ing will let you max­i­mize the company’s cus­tomer expe­ri­ence. They may make rec­om­men­da­tions to improve the fire safe­ty of your facil­i­ty, which is only pos­si­ble if they ful­ly under­stand it.

7. You Will Meet Codes and Legal Requirements

A direct result of hav­ing a sin­gle ven­dor man­age your fire­proof­ing sys­tem is the con­ve­nience and con­fi­dence in stay­ing up-to-date with changes to legal require­ments or codes. Any rep­utable fire­proof­ing con­trac­tor will make it a point to mon­i­tor and respond to new codes, as this is their spe­cial­ty. By using the same con­trac­tor who did the ini­tial instal­la­tion, they bring the unique per­spec­tive of hav­ing both his­to­ry with the project and con­fi­dence it was done right. Because of this, they can eas­i­ly con­firm whether your facil­i­ty meets new codes and requirements.

8. It Saves You Time

Think about all of the time and effort that goes into man­ag­ing each of the ven­dors with which your facil­i­ty works. Track­ing invoic­es and impor­tant doc­u­men­ta­tion; bills must be paid in a time­ly manner.

This addi­tion­al effort is dupli­cat­ed for every ven­dor, result­ing in lost time. If the same ven­dor pro­vides mul­ti­ple ser­vices, the addi­tion­al time and effort required are min­i­mal. You will find your team spend­ing a lot less time man­ag­ing paper­work, billing, and oth­er doc­u­men­ta­tion for a sin­gle fire­proof­ing con­trac­tor than they would if they had to man­age sev­er­al. Sim­ply put, engag­ing two ven­dors instead of one imme­di­ate­ly dou­bles the efforts involved.

9. It Reduces Your Costs

Hir­ing a sin­gle fire­proof­ing main­te­nance ven­dor will also save your facil­i­ty mon­ey. To start, your spend­ing less man­ag­ing the paper­work and billing equates to few­er hours (or they can use their time on oth­er more impor­tant tasks).

A sin­gle ven­dor does more than reduce your pay­roll costs — you will like­ly have few­er fees and oth­er expens­es. From fees asso­ci­at­ed with writ­ing checks to oth­er mis­cel­la­neous fees charged by the con­trac­tors, all of these are reduced. In many cas­es, fire­proof­ing ven­dors will also give you dis­counts if you hire them to com­plete mul­ti­ple services.

10. You Cre­ate a Long-Last­ing Relationship

One of the most over­looked but impor­tant rea­sons to use a sin­gle ven­dor for your fire­proof­ing main­te­nance is the rela­tion­ship you will build with them. Ide­al­ly, you will devel­op a long-last­ing rela­tion­ship built on mutu­al trust and respect. The ven­dor will trust that you keep com­mu­ni­ca­tions open and pay on time. You will trust they per­form high-qual­i­ty ser­vices and have your facility’s best inter­ests at heart. Hav­ing this type of rela­tion­ship filled with trust gives you more con­fi­dence in the safe­ty of your facil­i­ty. It also reas­sures you that your ven­dor will be there when you need them.

Con­clu­sion

Choose a sin­gle ven­dor for all your fire­proof­ing main­te­nance needs. Doing so saves you time and mon­ey and gives you addi­tion­al assur­ance that your facil­i­ty is pro­tect­ed from fires. With a sin­gle fire­proof­ing ven­dor, you will work with only one point of con­tact. Added to that, your fire­proof­ing con­trac­tor will bet­ter under­stand your sys­tem, so they can make expert rec­om­men­da­tions to ensure the safe­ty and pro­tec­tion of your facility. 

At Kaloutas, we built last­ing rela­tion­ships with our clients to become their go-to full-ser­vice facil­i­ty main­te­nance provider. Pri­or­i­tiz­ing pro­grams over projects, we see to it that each client receives the high­est-qual­i­ty com­mer­cial and indus­tri­al fire­proof­ing, floor­ing, con­tain­ment, clean­ing, and paint­ing ser­vices under one roof: Kaloutas. Con­tact us to learn more about our fire­proof­ing ser­vices and every­thing else we do.