For Sunrise Senior Living, keeping their residents safe is everything. With a highly vulnerable population, many of whom can’t simply walk out the door when an alarm sounds, there’s no room for error. Across eleven states and nearly 80 facilities, the Summit Fire National Accounts team keeps one of the country’s largest senior living operators in compliance, on schedule, and out of fire watch.
About the Client
Sunrise Senior Living is one of the most recognized names in senior care in the United States, operating more than 270 communities nationwide. Founded on the belief that older adults deserve a life of purpose and quality, Sunrise provides a range of services spanning assisted living, memory care, and long-term elder care.
We currently manage fire and life safety compliance for 78 Sunrise facilities in Maryland, Virginia, Delaware, New Jersey, Georgia, Michigan, Ohio, Illinois, Kansas, Louisiana, and Arizona.
The Challenge
Fire safety in a senior living facility is a fundamentally different problem than in most other building types. Residents are elderly, and many are mobility-impaired or bedridden. On top of that, some facilities have wings serving patients with Alzheimer’s or dementia. Although not as strictly regulated as hospitals and other healthcare facilities, you’re still dealing with a “defend in place” environment; there are no fire drills where everyone files out to the parking lot.
This impacts fire safety in several ways. First, inspections must be up-to-date. A lapsed inspection isn’t just a paperwork problem; it’s a compliance failure with implications for state licensing and the safety of everyone in the building. And when deficiencies are found, they can’t sit in a queue waiting to be fixed. When a sprinkler head fails inspection or a set of extinguishers comes due for hydrostatic testing, the clock starts immediately.
There’s also the challenge of conducting inspections and maintenance in a senior living environment. Inspections and repairs have to work around meal service, activity schedules, staffing levels, and the daily rhythms of a care facility. What works for a technician’s schedule is beside the point.
Managing all of that across a single facility is a full-time job. Managing it across 78 facilities — spread across eleven states, under varying AHJ requirements, with a portfolio that grows and shifts as Sunrise acquires and sells properties — is something else entirely. Without the right infrastructure, things can easily fall through the cracks.
The Solution
Our answer to that complexity is built around a single organizing principle: one point of contact for everything.
Whether a Sunrise facility manager needs to schedule an inspection, check on a repair, or resolve an invoice question, they reach the same person. Always. Not a scheduling department for appointments, an accounts team for billing, and a service desk for repairs. One person, who knows their account, knows their sites, and knows the people on both sides of the relationship. Behind that contact sits a backup coordinator and a support manager to ensure continuous coverage, but the relationship stays consistent.
When a technician visits a site and the inspection turns up a deficiency, the person who receives the report is the same person who follows up on it, sends the quote, and ensures the repair is completed. Nothing gets handed off. Nothing falls through the cracks.
Where we have our own branch coverage, we self-perform inspections and repairs using our own trained technicians. Where geography requires it, we manage a vetted network of third-party partners, with coordination, reporting, and accountability running through the same point of contact regardless. From Sunrise’s perspective, the experience is seamless.
Underpinning all of it is our digital reporting platform. Every piece of equipment in a Sunrise facility (sprinkler heads, alarm panel components, extinguishers, etc.) is barcoded and tracked in the system. When one of our technicians conducts an inspection, they scan equipment with a tablet, capturing install dates, testing records, inspection history, and any recommendations or deficiencies in real time. As soon as the tech uploads the report, it’s visible to the Sunrise team the same day. No email chain, no waiting for a PDF to arrive, and no wondering whether the report made it into the right folder.
The platform also allows us to configure access by role. Sunrise’s corporate team has visibility across the entire portfolio, regional directors can see all the facilities they run, and facility managers at a single location see only their building’s reports. When an AHJ walks into a building and asks for inspection records, staff can pull them up on the spot.
The Results
Over the years, we’ve developed a great working relationship with Sunrise. This is due in large part to our strong commitment to communication at every level: with facility managers navigating day-to-day operations, with regional directors managing multi-site compliance, and with corporate leadership focused on portfolio-wide performance. We also meet with Sunrise’s corporate leadership onsite in McLean, Virginia, for quarterly business reviews, keeping communication open at the executive level and getting ahead of issues before they become problems. We understand how to work within each tier of Sunrise’s organization, and Sunrise knows who to call when anything comes up.
Most importantly, Sunrise’s facilities and the thousands of residents who live in them are protected by fire and life safety systems that are inspected on time, proactively maintained, and managed by a team that treats compliance as a serious responsibility — not a line item.
A Fire & Life Safety Partner You Can Count On
Summit Fire National Accounts provides comprehensive fire and life safety services to multi-location clients nationwide, with specialized expertise in federal government facilities, healthcare, and commercial properties requiring stringent compliance standards. Contact us today to learn how we can help keep your facilities safe and compliant.