What does a fire protection company do?
A fire protection company inspects, tests and maintains a building's fire equipment — extinguishers, alarms, sprinklers and the backflow device — and documents each visit.
The legal weight sits on the building, not the vendor. OSHA states that the employer is responsible for the inspection, maintenance and testing of all portable fire extinguishers in the workplace. A fire protection company is who you hire to discharge that duty; it does not transfer it.
Source: OSHA, 29 CFR 1910.157
This page is general information, not professional advice, and it is not legal advice. Fire code is adopted locally and your building's requirements come from your own fire marshal and your insurer, so the only schedule that governs your property is the one they give you in writing.
The four things on a typical service agreement
- Portable fire extinguishers. The annual maintenance check, the tag, the recharge when a unit has been used, and the six-year and hydrostatic work when it falls due.
- The fire alarm system. Inspection and testing on the schedule your local fire code adopts, plus monitoring if the panel reports off site.
- The sprinkler system. The annual inspection, the five-year internal pipe inspection, and any obstruction investigation that follows from it.
- The backflow preventer on the riser. Its own certified test and its own report to the water authority.
Some companies do all four; plenty do two of them and subcontract the rest. That is worth establishing before you sign, because a single invoice from one company does not by itself mean one company did the work.
What OSHA puts on you rather than on them
Two duties stay in the building. Portable extinguishers are visually inspected monthly, and that check is done by your own people. And the employer has to record the annual maintenance date and keep the record for a year after the last entry or the life of the shell, whichever is less, available to an inspector on request.
Source: OSHA, 29 CFR 1910.157
Neither of those is billable work, and neither is optional. A service company that offers to handle your monthly checks is selling you convenience, not compliance — the requirement is written on the employer.
Where the equipment has to be
Placement is the part most buildings get wrong quietly. OSHA requires that all employees have access to an extinguisher within seventy-five feet of travel distance for Class A hazards, and within fifty feet for Class B hazards such as workshops, storage areas, garages, warehouses and service or manufacturing areas. Where combustible cooking media are present, the maximum travel distance is thirty feet.
Source: OSHA Evacuation Plans eTool
Travel distance means the walk, not the straight line. NFPA is explicit that the distance measured has to be the actual distance a person would need to walk to reach the extinguisher, and that occupants are not expected to walk through walls. A partition wall put up during a fit-out can put a building out of compliance without a single extinguisher having moved.
Source: NFPA
If you want the count before the site visit, use the fire extinguisher calculator.
What to ask before you sign a service agreement
- Which of the four systems are you actually servicing, and which are subcontracted?
- What is inside the annual price, and which items are billed separately when they fall due?
- What documentation do we get after each visit, and in what form?
- Who holds the certification for the backflow test, and who files the report with the water authority?
- What is your response time when something fails between scheduled visits?
Independent or national — what the search results say
Fire protection has been consolidating: several national groups have spent years buying independent extinguisher and sprinkler firms, and their brands now appear on the first page of results for this work. What they have not done is take the page over. Search for fire protection services today and the results are still overwhelmingly small local companies, with the national names among them rather than in front of them. Which is to say the choice is genuinely still a choice, and the questions above are how you make it.
Questions people ask next
- What does a fire protection company do?
- It inspects, tests and maintains the fire equipment a building is required to keep working — extinguishers, alarm systems, sprinklers and the backflow device on the riser — and leaves documentation of each visit.
- Does hiring a fire protection company make them responsible for compliance?
- No. OSHA states that the employer is responsible for the inspection, maintenance and testing of all portable fire extinguishers in the workplace. You are hiring help with a duty that stays yours.
- How far can an extinguisher be from where I work?
- OSHA requires access within seventy-five feet of travel distance for Class A hazards and fifty feet for Class B. Where cooking oils and fats are present the limit is thirty feet.
- Do I still have to check extinguishers myself?
- Yes. OSHA requires portable extinguishers to be visually inspected monthly, and that check is done in the building. The annual maintenance check is the one a service company performs.
Written for building owners by Most Recommended Fire Protection, which measures which fire protection companies AI assistants actually recommend. Nobody can pay to be on those lists. How we measure.