Fire-safe homes for older people

The Yrjö ja Hanna Foundation was established in 1996 to promote the well-being and quality of life of older people, people with disabilities, children and others who need help with their daily activities. Today, the foundation has 22 service housing properties and two right-of-occupancy sites around Finland, and new ones are being built all the time. The foundation’s properties have a total of 1,250 homes, with an average of 50–60 residents in each building.

Ilkka Murto, property director at the Yrjö ja Hanna Foundation, says that one thing stands above all others in the design of the foundation’s homes. “Our vision is to create some of the best community living homes in Finland, where older people can live for as long as possible. At all our sites, we want to invest especially in the safety of living. Safety is made up of many different things, such as a sense of community, available services, accessible homes and fire safety. The fact that most of the residents in our homes are older people makes safety extremely important.”

Careful maintenance guarantees safety

PAP’s role in ensuring the safety of the Yrjö ja Hanna homes is to make sure that the fire alarm systems in all of the foundation’s properties are always in working order and properly maintained.

According to PAP’s sales manager Pasi Lehtonen, the scale of the cooperation with the foundation has grown gradually. “Our first Yrjö ja Hanna Foundation site was the Killinki service home in Sipoo, completed in 2017, where our task was to install a fire alarm system. Since then, we have also installed systems at the foundation’s other sites.”

At present, PAP’s main task is the maintenance of the existing systems. “With this many sites, taking care of annual servicing is a large and time-consuming job. The Yrjö ja Hanna Foundation decided to handle this smartly and centralised the maintenance of fire safety equipment at all its sites with us. It is quite clear that when one provider is responsible for maintaining the systems, the foundation saves not only time but also costs.”

Of course, not everything can be measured in numbers. “Many older people live in the foundation’s properties. That is why it is extremely important that the fire alarm systems at the sites are set up to serve their particular needs. In the event of a fire, it must be ensured that residents have enough time to get away from the fire. For this reason, the fire alarm systems in the foundation’s properties have been set to be very sensitive. They react precisely to potential hazards and thus ensure that residents can be moved to safety quickly. And if the system did not work at all because of a lack of maintenance, the consequences would not bear thinking about.”

In addition to maintaining fire safety, PAP is also responsible for keeping the rescue plan for the Yrjö ja Hanna Foundation’s properties up to date. “In 2019, we drew up a rescue plan for the foundation covering all of its sites. We also add the annual service reports for the fire safety systems in all the properties to the plan as servicing is carried out. This is a system that really works, because the rescue department can easily find all the system information it needs in the rescue plan when it needs it during its annual inspections. It is also a benefit for the customer: when all the important documents are kept in one and the same place, there is no need to search for them in your own archives when the need arises.”

Many benefits from cooperation

In Ilkka Murto’s experience, organisations like the Yrjö ja Hanna Foundation in particular benefit from centralising fire safety maintenance with one partner. “When there are numerous properties, each with many different systems optimised for that particular site, managing the whole with several providers would be unnecessarily laborious. You get the most out of the cooperation when you have a single contact person who knows all the sites and their special features. An important part of the partnership is also that you do not have to chase up servicing yourself; the service provider takes care of it on its own initiative.”

The Yrjö ja Hanna Foundation plans to strengthen its cooperation with PAP even further. “Our goal is that in the future our units will use fire safety systems that are even more uniform than they are today. When fire safety practices, systems and devices are consistent, it is easier to train the staff of the units to use them. We also make use of PAP’s expertise in the design of our new projects, which helps us build a uniform fire safety model across all our sites.”

Whether it is a supported housing site like the Yrjö ja Hanna Foundation’s properties, an ordinary housing company, a commercial property or even an industrial facility, Ilkka Murto recommends always leaving its fire safety in the hands of a professional in the field. “If you want to make the best use of your time, save on costs and, above all, ensure that the fire safety of your site is at the highest possible level, centralise your purchasing with a provider that really knows what it is doing. In my experience, PAP is one of them.”