Taking a traditional paper and pen approach may work for a very small facility whose passive fire protection maintenance needs are minimal, but in the current climate of advanced technology, the paper and pen approach likely has disadvantages that far outweigh the biggest, “we’ve always done it this way,” advantage. Simple programs such as Microsoft Word, Excel, and even Access, can provide more detailed and easily maintained record keeping for procedures, inspection results, educational documents and remediation efforts.
Using basic computer applications allows building owners and the contractor to more readily document their maintenance and management efforts. Before and after pictures can be married up with excel records, and these records can easily be sorted. These programs are inexpensive and easy to use—most people are using these applications in one way or another. At a certain point, however, even advanced Excel and Access databases fall short for long-term maintenance, as they provide a static viewpoint of a facility at one point in time.