Time....is of the essence

No kidding. You snooze you lose.

Time is of the essence.

What's this about?

Don't wait until it's too late to address outstanding issues with your fire protection or life safety systems. I know that seems like common sense. I know, I know, I know.
But......

I received a phone call this morning from a (soon to be) client (they are still under contract with a company that they are not happy with - that's another blog post in the future).  When he got into work this morning, there was a proposal in his email from his current sprinkler company.  It seems that they want to "change" the anti-freeze in a pretty large system that protects an attached wooden shed.

Great.  We run across this all of the time; anti-freeze systems with subpar or non-compliant antifreeze.  It definitely needs to be changed from time to time, depending on a few variables.
He understands that too.  So what's the big deal?

Well...it's December 28.  The system was inspected in the beginning of April. April 6th to be specific. 266 days between the inspection, and a proposal being "dropped" into an inbox.

Furthermore.....the inspection report (that my soon to be client didn't look past the first page when he received it months ago) states that the anti-freeze only tested to +20ºF (that points to more issues than just bad anti-freeze...I wonder if they are going to address those other issues? hmmmm...probably not.)

So what's my point, right?

Time is of the essence.  Don't wait to read the inspection report. Don't wait for the sprinkler contractor to send a proposal to do work.  Don't wait for them to tell you that the deficiencies that are in the report, actually need to be fixed.  Don't wait.....and if you don't understand something in your report....don't wait to ask....

This seems to me, on the surface, that the sprinkler contractor either forgot about the anti-freeze issue at this facility, and just happened upon their list of "proposals to send out"....

-or-

It's almost the end of the year, and they are scraping things together that they can get customers to jump on ("anti-freeze that only tests to +20ºF....of course the customer is going to want that changed before the temperature really drops!!!!! They won't be able to say no!"....I've heard these things (and much worse) come out of the mouths of people writing these proposals.  They want to put a little more money in their revenue column before the end of the year.  Honestly, I would not be surprised one bit, if they had an entire list of clients that they sent similar proposals to...money - in - the bank!

And they are right.  Yes. It needs to be changed...and like...NOW.  The outdoor shed has a lot of raw product in there, that a frozen/broken pipe will certainly damage.

This is just one example as to how waiting.....can cost a lot of money...or make a contractor a lot of money - depending on how you look at it.  Now my (future) client can't really go and get pricing from two other vendors, as he is required to do if he wants to use someone other than the contractor that they have a service contract with. Oops.

This is just the tip of the iceberg.

Many other things get kicked to the side...much worse things.  Things get put off and put off some more and put off some more again...until (whatever) NEEDS to be fixed NOW!  That's when it's gonna hurt you in the wallet.

Really. Time IS of the essence.....

321FireProtection.com