A few years ago when I was involved in renegotiating the off-site
records storage contract (with a MAJOR international provider) for the
company I worked for at the time, we tried to incorporate the NFPA 232
Standard. The supplier refused, saying that its requirements were
overly burdensome and would be excessively costly to implement. Because
they already had our records, we ended up backing off on that, but I
never felt comfortable about it. If the largest supplier of off-site
records storage won't recognize it as a standard, how standard is it?
Pilar McAdam
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From: Records Management Program [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On
Behalf Of Hugh Smith
Sent: Wednesday, March 05, 2008 8:29 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: How ethical are you as a records manager?
Here is a basic question "How ethical are you as a records manager?"
If you woke up tomorrow and found out some disturbing news that
impacted your company's basic records safety and corporate integrity,
would you act on it?
Here's a little test to determine if you would act on real world
conditions?
So first, let us pick a stage on which to act out our reality play.
As a records manager, you have certain documents that describe good
practice. Let's choose one and do a reality check. The National Fire
Protection Association has a Standard 232 "Protection of Records"
which is the bible for designing a records center or auditing an
offsite vendor. This standard describes the size of compartments for
your records storage. It requires that records storage compartment be
no larger than 40,000 sq. ft. After that fire walls must be used to
limit the loss from a fire. If you have an 80,000 sq. ft. building it
cannot be one compartment, It must have a divider wall that makes
the building into two distinct fire protected chambers. If it is
120,000 sq. ft it must be divided into three (3) compartments.
So assuming you have the good practice to visit your offsite records
collection for an audit on an annual basis,* whether it is 200 boxes,
2,000 or 200,000 boxes and you see that your vendor has a compartment
size well in excess of 40,000 sq. ft. do you:
1) Ask your salesman to buy you lunch and take the rest of the
afternoon off?
2) Keep quiet back at work as you will surely be criticized, if they
find you selected a vendor who failed to meet even the most minimal
storage requirement for business records.
3) You notify the offsite vendor that their warehouse is non-
compliant as a records storage facility, as defined under National
Fire Code. Upon arriving back at the office, you formally request
legal to send a letter of notice to the vendor to "correct their
deficiency as they are is in breach for failure to follow recognized
fire and building codes as defined in NFPA 232."
4) Notify the fire marshal that a records center code violation
exists and ask for the fire department to place the Owner on notice
of a deficiency.
5) Notify your C-Level management that your selected vendor is
storing your records in a facility that create's liability for your
organization. Alert them to the fact that utilizing a vendor that is
knowingly deficient in their fire protection standards could create
additional liability for the corporation and the officers and Board
of Directors.
6) Lose a little sleep the first week but continue as before as
changing vendors is a huge endeavor.
About once a month there is a Press Release about a 200,000 sq. ft
records center here and 500,000 sq. ft facility there. Do you wonder
if these facilities are being compartmented? Do you care?
These sites are so big they become terrorist opportunities. These
records center consolidations are posing a huge risk to their
communities. If you as records managers can accept these tremendous
losses (4 million boxes, 6 million boxes) in a single event with no
concern, is records management of paper even relevant any more?
Will the size of these centers grow until the risk of fire becomes a
Global Warming issue?
Since 2000 the compartment size of 250,000 boxes to 1,200,000 boxes
to unlimited is so out of sync with the new Federal requirement to
protect records, that I wonder if the acceptance of these new Mega
Centers by you is.........................
How you answer the above really defines not only you but your industry.
Hugh Smith
FIRELOCK Fireproof Modular Vaults
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(610) 756-4440 Fax (610) 756-4134
WWW.FIRELOCK.COM
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