Richland Washington Case Study

In Richland WA, the fire department is the authority responsible for enforcing the laws that surround inspections, testing, and maintenance of fire/life safety systems. The tools and resources available to the Richland fire marshal was only allowing the dedicated fire prevention staff to achieve 20% compliance; meaning 1 in 5 property owners were getting their inspections done on time (or at all). In January 2011, the Richland WA Fire Department partnered with Tegris Inc to improve the level of compliance for inspecting, testing, and maintenance (ITM) of these systems in the community. Tegris provides a no-cost compliance tracking program that automatically drives notifications to property owners who have overdue or impaired systems and builds the city records by collaborating with all the relevant stakeholders during the process.

One year later the department is delivering astounding and measurable improvements to the community and the inspection contractor industry. They represent one of the first cities to adopt a 3rd party enforcement management program and have the highest fully-measured compliance in the nation..

• Richland's compliance has more than tripled to 76%
• 26.8% of unrecorded systems have been discovered
• The inspection work has increased 457.7%
• The number of deficient systems has been tracked and decreased to less than 7%
• The Fire Department is communicating with every stakeholder at least once per year where previously they were not communicating at all.

Richland, just like Lynnwood accomplished this with no additional resources and for absolutely no cost to the city.

As Richland has entered its second year of the program the improvements continue to grow. Richland has established an internal model where the percentage of compliant properties that are less than 90 days overdue. They factor in the time spans between the property owner arranging for a contractor, the contractor scheduling the appointment, conducting the testing and the date they finally enter the records. With that model, they have discovered that some properties will be overdue for a period of time. By accepting this and allowing for some leeway, Richland has found that they are very effective in using the Tegris Fire system. Figuring the above output, Richland is at 97% compliance today.

 

 

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