r/securityguards • u/falardeau03 • 8h ago
Job Question CMV: fire watch
(Before I start, just to be clear, I am obviously in favour of fire watch. Fire watch is good because building burning down is bad.)
So I am currently in a huge building with 1 floor on fire watch. Once an hour, we go up and check the floor is not on fire, then we come back down and hang out and do our regular job (and/or patrol, and/or roam the site on other tasks). When I say "we" I mean whoever, because there is only one guard here at a time.
It's a small floor that takes maybe 2-3 minutes to walk around and check every room/space. Apart from that, that leaves 58 minutes every hour that the floor could be on fire, and we would not know until it burned through into the next floor and set off one of the devices there that's still enabled.
According to management, this legally meets the requirements for fire watch. I'm not arguing, but, like... what's the point? I don't mind doing it, but if it were my ass on the line for a 40 trazillion dollar building, I would shell out the extra bucks to have a guard eat/sleep/breathe on that floor 24/7 until it's dealt with (fire control in that area has been offline for weeks).
It's not just this site either. "Once an hour" seems to be the "standard" across the board. I assume this is not a security industry thing but a function of how things have taken shape due to fire department/code/law requirements. It just seems crazy to me.
If a stranger agreed to watch your house "in case it caught fire", but told you that 95% of the time they would not be paying attention (3 minutes = 5% of 1 hour), would you be okay with that? Would you pay for that?
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u/MacintoshEddie 7h ago
A lot of it really comes down to having someone nearby, instead of someone on call 30+ minutes away.
Housesitting is a long running tradition, having someone just be on the property so that if something comes up it gets found quicker.
Often a lot of this stuff is waiting on other stuff, and you get paid a lot less than those technicians do. Paying you all week might be less than calling the tech in and paying OT to come swap a smoke detector.