How to Ensure the Safety of Your Commercial Property

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Having a property that is safe and secure in the case of a host of emergencies can save you a lot of mental energy and a lot of money. In addition to getting the right security and ensuring you follow OSHA guidelines for your employees’ safety, you need to make sure your building is up to standard as well. Thankfully, having a safe building can typically be achieved with consistency and diligence.

Maintain the Building

Maintaining your building is one of the most important and most obvious ways you can protect yourself, your employees, and your property from hazards. Perform regular cleanings every week and every month. But in addition to this regular maintenance, make sure you perform routine inspections of your building in the spring and the fall.

Make sure you clean the gutters, check the roofing, check the HVAC system, and ensure the electrical looks good.

Follow Safety Regulations

Maintaining your building is great but it’s not enough if your building isn’t up to code. Safety regulations vary by building, but making sure your building follows safety regulations is important. If you are taking possession of an older building, you should do your homework. Perform thorough inspections to find any damage that needs to be repaired.

Then, in addition to these inspections, you should contact relevant authorities to get more information on the building and what it needs to have added to be up to code. The authority having jurisdiction over building safety is typically the state fire marshal.

Run Safety Drills

You should also ensure that your employees feel comfortable and understand how to act in an emergency. This is especially important if your commercial property is built to draw a large number of customers (i.e. a shopping mall or large grocery store property).

In emergencies, customers will likely be scared. Having employees who can stay calm under stress and who understand emergency protocol is one of your best precautions.  

As you’re thinking about making your building safer, make sure to think beyond the actual building requirements. You want your building to not only be physically safe but to also feel safe. Doing your best to have nice curb appeal can help customers and employees feel like it’s a nice safe environment.

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