You don’t know their names. You might not even know they’re here. But if the building catches fire, floods, or locks down, they’re your problem.
This is the chaos of modern coworking.
Startups cycle in and out. Freelancers float through. Teams come for a week, vanish on Friday. Yet the building’s obligations under BFSR—Building Fire Safety Regulation—don’t vanish with them. You’re required to protect everyone, not just the regulars. Not just the people who read the onboarding PDF.
Occupant awareness isn’t optional
BFSR doesn’t care about guest passes or transient licenses. It mandates one thing: every occupant must be aware of evacuation procedures, safety equipment, and emergency protocols. If they’re on the premises, they’re your responsibility.
There’s no grace period. No exceptions for first timers. The second they swipe in, they count.
The community is temporary. Risk is not.
You can’t rely on repetition. You can’t assume word-of-mouth. That guy coding in the corner might be here for four hours. But if a fire breaks out during hour three, you’re still on the hook.
This is the paradox of shared space safety: permanent accountability for temporary people.
Onboarding must be fast, mandatory, and impossible to ignore
Forget soft intros. The safety pitch needs teeth. No Wi-Fi until they see the map. No coffee until they tap through the exits.
Install an onboarding kiosk at every entry point. QR codes at the front desk that link to a two-minute safety drill. Make badge activation contingent on a completed safety module.
And ditch the beige. This isn’t a terms-and-conditions form. Use harsh colours, sharp fonts, bold declarations: “KNOW HOW TO ESCAPE OR DON’T ENTER.”
Inject safety prompts into daily life
People don’t remember what they read at 9am. They remember what they see when it matters.
Use screensavers to display emergency exits. Flash QR codes near every coffee machine: “Scan to find your nearest way out.”
Push micro-alerts randomly: “Do you know where the nearest fire extinguisher is? Take 5 seconds. Look now.”
Make safety part of the space’s ambient noise. Not once. Constantly.
Use BFSR as the baseline, not the ceiling
BFSR compliance is table stakes. Want real coverage? Go beyond.
Add smart access logs so you know who’s in the building at any given time. Use sensors to track real occupancy, not just desk bookings.
Equip your front desk team with a digital dashboard that flags when someone hasn’t completed safety training. No badge? No exception.
Train like it’s real. Because it is.
Run surprise drills. Not for the full building—target floors. Make them messy. See who ignores them.
Create scenarios for lone workers. What if someone’s wearing noise-cancelling headphones? Test that.
Your evacuation plan should function when people are distracted, unaware, and untrained. Because many of them will be.
Assign safety stewards. Rotate them. Empower them.
Don’t centralise emergency knowledge. Spread it. Every cluster of desks should have someone who knows where the exits are, where the extinguishers sit, what to do when things go sideways.
Give them badges. Slack tags. Physical identifiers. Rotate them weekly to ensure nobody zones out.
Gamify the awareness. Reward vigilance.
Hold monthly “spot the extinguisher” contests. Give coffee vouchers for people who complete a new safety quiz. Run a leaderboard for fastest simulated evacuations.
This isn’t just compliance. It’s culture hacking. Make safety part of the identity, not just the fine print.
Everyone’s a risk. Plan like everyone’s the problem.
The stranger in the hallway? Might trigger the alarm. The guest without a badge? Might block the exit. The freelancer deep in a headset? Might not hear the alert.
This is your design challenge: safety for ghosts. Protocols for people who don’t belong but still matter.
Because when the fire comes, no one’s “just visiting.”