Category: Emergency Preparedness

Measles vaccine vials and syringe

Keeping Measles Out of Your Facility

With the current measles outbreak making headlines across the country, facility managers are wondering what they can do to protect their employees and tenants. Can you require your employees to be vaccinated against measles? What should you do if you learn someone at your facilities has a case of measles?

Workplace violence prevention

Engineering Facilities to Prevent Workplace Violence

As a facilities management (FM) professional, you are probably not writing workplace violence prevention plans. However, you probably are looking at facility design, and facilities managers can be key in helping their buildings and tenants with hazard identification and engineering controls used to prevent violence.

Facility team meeting to review security assessment.

Assessment of Security at Your Facility Needs Action Steps

It’s important to conduct a security assessment of your facilities, but the process doesn’t end when you get the report. As a facility manager you need to have frank conversations with leadership at your organization about how you can put the suggestions from the assessment into action. Having the data about security gaps, equipment needs, […]

Angry customer arguing with cashier

Handling Disruptive People in Public Facilities

Certain facilities have an “invitee relationship” with the public, and they actively encourage people to use their hotels, bars, restaurants, movie theaters, or nightclubs. Beyond just the hospitality industries, other public facilities include hospitals and medical clinics, stores and malls, churches, libraries, and parks. Facility managers and their security teams need to know how to […]

Facility with Trees

Protecting Your Facility with Zone Thinking

While some facilities rarely see clients or customers because they have no need to come to the site, other buildings for public agencies and private sector companies get a lot of foot traffic. It’s important to set up zones of access based on the need to control how nonemployees go to certain places inside the […]

Powerlines down during after a major storm

Preparing Facilities and Employees for Natural and Environmental Disasters

In 2017, there were 10,000 deaths caused by natural disasters worldwide. Many of those occurred while people were in their workplaces. In addition, research shows that the number of recorded natural disasters has increased over the past century. So, it’s still critical, perhaps now more than ever, that our facilities and employees are well-prepared for […]

CFATS Program Extended, But, What is the Personnel Surety Requirement?

On January 18, 2019, President Trump signed a bill providing another 15 months of funding for the Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) Chemical Facility Anti-Terrorism Standards program (CFATS). Trump signed the bill the day after the program was set to expire. News of the extension provides a moment to examine one of the more unusual […]

Getting the Word Out with Mass Notification Systems

Mass notification systems utilize a number of integrated communication devices and software to alert building occupants about a potentially dangerous situation and facilitate the proper action and response. They represent a very beneficial added layer of life safety protection.