Rank: New forum user 
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Ive seen this topic discussed previously but I am yet to see any procedures people have implemented.
As companies go towards hybrid working models, how do you ensure you have fire marshal cover in the office? We have an office space that accomodates 700 employees, working over 4 floors. The employees are split into atleast 15 differnet departments. We have around 30 qualified Fire Marshals..... but how do you ensure the minimum requirement are actually present at the office space when we implement a Hybrid working model? Without various HOD's collaborating and fixing which days an employee is allowed to work from home so a FM rota can be drawn up, I cant see a way of solving this issue? Has anyone come accross any software or procedural advances in their business that has helped?
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Rank: New forum user
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I have a very similar problem, we are going to flexible hybrid working, where we could not guarantee having a fire warden on any floor at any time. We have a cohort of staff who work in the building on a shift basis which has helped in the first aid provision, but we could not expect to send staff back into a potential risk (fire) to sweep floors. I have also seen the posts about the upskilling of all staff on fire awareness and the Companies emergency procedure, where the first person to don the hi-vis vest is the nominated warden to assist in the evacuation. This has thrown up the question of training again and what if’s, for example no one puts on the vest and takes ownership. Our processes are reasonably detailed and include invacuation for potential marauding terrorists etc. From the legal side of things if we upskilled staff to understand our basic procedures (different alarm for each event) and asked them to basically sweep the floor and entrust one / two persons per floor to don the hi-vis and report that area clear would this suffice. Answers on a post card?
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Rank: Super forum user
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As you have been using home(remote) working is it not possible that your people use hot desking ie they use all the desks on one floor before starting to use the next floor. This could possibly reduce the number of floors in use and hence reduce the number of fire wardens required. This would obviously work better in open plan offices but with a little bit of ingenuity it should be able to work in any area.
Is the problem more to do with managers wanting to keep their teams together. Perhaps if managers wanted to get their teams together for a meeting they could use a empty area and the manager acts as fire warden for that meeting area.
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Rank: Super forum user
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This is an issue I have been grappling with for the last 18 months..... and have not resolved it. The situation has eased in recent weeks as more people come back, but in the height of lockdown we had a buiding designed for around 5000 with just a couple of hundred staff working spread out across this huge building - and maybe less than 50 at night. Now the issue is different people working different shifts across 24/7 working. Most of the shifts/rotas are locally arranged with no central control, so I wouldnt know who has been due in or not.
Recent threatened Tube strikes in London have leds to plans to revert back to the peak covid days and 75% home working leaving a tiny amount of staff in work at any one time
Throwing money at training extra fire wardens isnt the answer so we have carried out a three stage plan.
1) Staff communications: Asking staff to look after each other in an evacution and 'sweep as they go'. 2) Recruit & train more 'Evacuation Coordinators' - the staff who the Fire Wardens report to - as they form the most critical role and resilience is vital 3) Carry out 3 x fire drills a year. We have done two so far in 2021. This flushes out problems and reminds staff they can use covid one way routes - such as 'in only' entrances as fire escape routes We have yet to get wardens from 100% of all 38 evacuation zones to report in these covid fire drills. But have trained security staff to mop up areas where no fire wardens have reported. This was a difficult - + relatively high risk change, as we are asking security staff to check parts of the building perhaps 10 mins into the fire (with fire service approval of course).
Again, targetted extra training here has mitigated risks But it is accepted, we will probably not be able to account for all staff on all ocassions as we used to before covid
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 2 users thanked Messey for this useful post.
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Rank: Super forum user 
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Originally Posted by: W.G-Millar  Without various HOD's collaborating and fixing which days an employee is allowed to work from home so a FM rota can be drawn up, I cant see a way of solving this issue? Has anyone come accross any software or procedural advances in their business that has helped?
I think you've answered your own question - you need a rota. I note that it doesn't need to be an organisation-wide rota - if you have a departmental-based arrangement you can make it responsibility of each department to ensure that they have adequate cover each day.
I have concluded that although we have 'flexible' 'hybrid' working, that doesn't actually mean that each employee can decide on a whim when they wake up whether they will be going into work today - fire wardens at least need to ensure that 'their' area is covered. That's not actually a conceptual change - we used to do the same thing with respect to staff leave (i.e. warden A is on holiday next week, so they need to arrange with warden B that B will sweep A's area), it's just that now it's a more regular conversation between the wardens that cover each zone.
We have trained about twice as many fire wardens to make this easier. We have trained all wardens on all evacuation zones (e.g. where there are non-obvious plant rooms) - previously each warden had an assigned zone but didn't necesarily know the vagaries of all the others. We have also instigated a 'token' system, with a physical token located in each evacuation zone - the warden who sweeps each zone picks up the token, and then outside the building we check we have all the tokens. A warden who sees a token is gone knows someone else has taken on that zone, so this avoids the case of having multiple people each trying to be in charge of one zone. For tokens we've had (red) perspex keyfobs made up with company logo and name of the zone it applies to (actually these https://www.identitag.co...offin-Key-Fob-86p312.htm - no commercial interest in that supplier, others available, but they've always given me good service as both private purchaser and corporate).
We've had one fire drill with the new arrangemnst, which didn't quite go to plan, but that's the point of the drills! I expect we will move to more drills per year too.
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3 users thanked achrn for this useful post.
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Rank: Super forum user 
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I have nothing to offer but would just like to say what a brilliant question this is, with so many great answers explaining your systems. Hard work done by everyone. Well done all.
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1 user thanked firesafety101 for this useful post.
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Rank: New forum user
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It's interesting (and reassuring) others have the same challenge!
We have eight wings across four floors with about 25 colleagues on each wing. This will increase to about 75 on each wing from October as we ease social distancing (still only 75% capacity). Historically we trained 3/4 wardens on each wing to sweep in the event of an alarm and report to a co-ordinator outside. Going forward, with a requirement to be in the office for a minimum of one day a week, that's clearly not going to work. Training too many people risks teams wasting time nominating someone at the point of alarm or confusion assuming someone else has done it. We'd proposed that Facilities check in with managers every day for them to nominate wardens for the day, but were told managers also might not be in so won't know who from their team are in! The Facilities Team are too small (I'd imagine a common problem) to do all the sweeping. Back to the drawing board...... any other suggestions that have worked? Edited by user 03 September 2021 13:25:10(UTC)
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