Wednesday, August 22, 2007

Why are my ears bleeding?

Good afternoon everybody,

Fire alarm and sprinkler testing is scheduled for Thursday and Friday. This involves testing monitoring and fire suppression equipment. Each station will have to be tested. The process is that a technician will activate each monitor while another technician will be at the alarm panel to immediately cancel the signal. This is required yearly testing. There may be very brief soundings of the horn which will last no longer than it takes to turn it off. We apologize for any disruption in your work areas by personnel trying to reach monitoring devices. I received the notice today and apologize for passing on the short notice. Thanks


Come on now. Why would anyone schedule such a disruptive series of tests during operational hours? In the past, we used to schedule these to occur outside of normal business hours. The tests don't take very long and it is far better to inconvenience a couple of technicians that start work at 7:00 am than to blast everyone in the ESC several times during their work day. Management needs to plan ahead or follow well-established protocol - even if they disagree with those who may have developed it.

Fun Factoid: If you exclude the hours between 8:00 am and 5:00 pm, Monday through Friday, you have 123 hours a week when these sorts of tests could take place.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

It is a different place since Bret and Mark left. I doubt current management could spell protocol, let alone follow it.

Anonymous said...

I bet they can't do math either. If you take the time of the interruption and multply it by each person's hourly rate; you'll find this is a far more costly test than just an inconvenience. Perhaps that's why the District is in such financial dire straits.