The fire safety register: contents and upkeep

The fire safety register is one of the first documents requested during a safety commission visit. It gathers, in one place, the memory of a building's safety: its equipment, their inspections, evacuation drills and staff training. Poorly kept, it exposes the operator; well kept, it becomes a genuine tool for steering safety.

What the fire safety register is

It is a mandatory document in public-access buildings, provided for by the fire safety regulations. It records all the information relating to the establishment's safety and makes it possible to demonstrate, at any time, that the duties of upkeep, inspection and training are met.

In businesses, it does not always exist in this single form, but the logic is the same: France's Labour Code requires the supporting records of periodic checks on installations and emergency means to be kept available. Gathering these items in a single register is, in every case, the surest way to lose nothing.

Who keeps it, and who checks it

Responsibility for the register lies with the head of the establishment or the operator. In practice, several actors feed it: the technical services, the maintenance contractors who work on the extinguishers, the alarm or the smoke extraction, and the safety officer. The safety commission, for its part, can consult it at every visit: for them it is the proof that fire safety is genuinely tracked, and not merely displayed.

What the register must contain

The register generally brings together:

• the roster of staff in charge of the fire service and the establishment's safety instructions;
• the characteristics of the technical installations (electricity, gas, heating, lifts);
• the dates and results of periodic technical checks;
• the dates and reports of evacuation drills;
• staff training in fire safety and in handling extinguishers;
• works and fit-outs that affect safety.

The technical checks to log in it

The heart of the register is the periodic checks. It records the checks on extinguishers and fire hose reels, on the fire safety system and the alarm, on smoke extraction, on emergency lighting, and on the electrical and gas installations. Each line must state the date, the person involved and the result, with the matching report. This is exactly where paper registers show their limits: dates get lost, and nothing flags an approaching deadline.

Evacuation drills and staff training

The register is not limited to equipment. Evacuation drills, to be run periodically depending on the type of establishment, must be dated and commented on: duration, difficulties encountered, points to correct. The same goes for staff training. This information, often neglected, is looked at as closely as the physical checks, because it shapes how occupants behave in the event of a fire.

The most common gaps

The failings found during visits rarely come from a faulty piece of equipment, but from an incomplete register: checks carried out but not logged, for lack of retrieving the contractor's report, evacuation drills forgotten or undated, a register left frozen after a change of operator or officer, or works carried out without their safety impact being noted. Each of these gaps is easy to avoid, but hard to make up once the visit is under way.

The common thread of these oversights is almost always organisational: the information exists, but it is scattered across several people, several inboxes and several binders. A genuinely up-to-date register therefore depends less on individual rigour than on a single medium where every intervention is logged as it happens.

Paper or digital

The paper register is still common, but it gets lost, is filled in by hand and never warns of a deadline. A digital register centralises the same information, timestamps it, and links to each piece of equipment its checks and photo proof. Above all, it alerts before the deadline passes, which turns a record-keeping document into a prevention tool. It also eases the handover when an officer changes, since the memory of safety no longer rests on a single person.

How long to keep the supporting records

A register only has value if you can go back in time. Inspection reports, drill records and training certificates are kept for several years, in order to demonstrate the continuity of tracking and to cover the period during which liability could be sought. A register that keeps only the last year loses much of its value: it is the history that proves a device has been tracked without interruption, and that lets you objectify wear or the recurrence of a fault. The digital format eases this retention, without the risk of the paper degrading or being lost.

Keep your register up to date with KARTES

KARTES Fire safety records every safety device as a geolocated file, with its inspection deadlines and the history of its checks. Interventions are dated, photographed and traceable per device. You produce on demand the up-to-date state of checks, ready to present to the safety commission, and your contractors work on the same data as your own teams, with no duplicate register or lost version.

Key points

• A mandatory document in public-access buildings, open to the safety commission.
• It brings together equipment, technical checks, evacuation drills and training.
• Every check must be dated, attributed and backed by a report.
• Going digital prevents forgotten deadlines and centralises proof.
• A shared, geolocated medium aligns your teams and contractors.