A recent National Fire Protection Association (NFPA) survey has revealed that 75 per cent of fire and life safety professionals are not confident in generational knowledge transfer.

The survey polled fire and life safety professionals to assess industry challenges and how digital tools like NFPA LiNK can help save increasingly limited time and resources. Findings from the survey and conversations with these professionals revealed three key industry challenges:

• Collaboration: 78 per cent of respondents said employees in their organization primarily work in teams, yet collaboration was the most cited challenge (22 per cent) in the design and build process.
• Knowledge Transfer: Only 25 per cent of respondents felt confident about the transfer of institutional knowledge to the next generation as veteran employees retire.
• Convenience: Respondents cited search time spent locating specific codes, the need to lug physical code books around, and an inability to obtain all publications in real-time as inconveniences when it comes to accessing codes.

Created with these challenges in mind and meant to level up the static PDF model, NFPA LiNK is designed to be a one-stop-shop for subscribers to easily collaborate and document generational knowledge from any device, at any time.

Teams with NFPA LiNK subscriptions are able to collaborate in real-time as well as create notes and bookmark collections for everyone to leverage. Additionally subscriptions include interactive visual elements and situational navigation that aid with employee training and onboarding. Advanced search features, offline mode, and the ability to access all publications at their fingertips also provide ease-of-use for subscribers.

Kyle Spencer, Director of NFPA LiNK commented: “We are always grateful for a chance to gain valuable insights from the fire and life safety professionals who could most benefit from our digital platform. Collaboration and generational knowledge loss continue to be pertinent challenges in an evolving work landscape, and NFPA LiNK serves as a critical resource to drive efficiencies and retain veteran expertise.”