Do this and your insurance company might not have to pay if your building burns
The article below is basically about a building that was insured against fire, but because the owner did not properly maintain the buildings sprinkler system, as is required by code; the insurance company did not have to pay after a fire. In fact the owner had to repay the advance that they were given.
You can read the article below, but I wanted to start a conversation about passive fire protection. The building codes require rated walls be maintained so when your IT crews run new lines or new tenants renovate an office space or whatever may happen to any building, with any occupancy type, that could interfere with the integrity of a rated wall. Would the insurance company be able to identify this as a risk that would allow them to not have to pay out during a fire? The building codes are changing and now many projects are required to have third party special inspection of firestop installations. All it will take is one major loss and insurance companies will look more closely at passive fire protection. Also you will find that premiums will change and the way premiums are evaluated will change.
If you don’t want to run this risk, contact Halpert Life Safety and we will help you assess the risk in your building, we can help with due diligence before you purchase a building or during construction we can help ensure that your contractors are not missing anything. Check out next weeks blog post to learn about a major problem with ductwork that is very rarely done correctly. (at least from my experience…if I am wrong I’d love to know…write to me) It doesn’t matter if you are on a project in China, the Caribbean, Las Vegas or New York there are certain problems that are common. I can say that because Ive been there. Stay tuned to learn more about them! Together we all can be part of a movement- “Saving Lives for the Life of the Building.”tm
http://www.insurancejournal.com/news/east/2011/07/20/206553.htm#.T8O55FcdLD0.email
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Halpert Life Safety Consulting LLC’s
“Saving Lives for the Life of your Building” TM
Our mission is to make a colossal impact on the level of life safety of your building and on the talent of your people. We provide consultation, training, quality control and third party special inspection related to firestop and passive fire protection. We consult for the building industry in the New York/New Jersey (NY/NJ) metropolitan area, as well as across the United States and internationally.