Fire Alarm & Life Safety Manager

Department Leadership: Lead the daily operations of fire alarm and life-safety department. Establish departmental goals, priorities, staffing plans, and operating procedures. Coordinate resources across sales, estimating, project management, service, inspection, and field operations. Recruit, train, mentor, and develop technicians, programmers, inspectors, estimators, and project personnel. Maintain a culture centered on safety, accountability, technical excellence, urgency, and customer service. Identify opportunities to expand Beacon's fire alarm and life-safety capabilities throughout Middle Tennessee.

Financial Performance: Assume responsibility for the department's financial performance, including revenue, gross margin, operating expenses, backlog, cash flow, and profitability. Develop annual departmental budgets, forecasts, revenue goals, gross-margin targets, and staffing plans. Review job-cost performance, labor productivity, material costs, committed costs, billing status, and projected cost at completion. Participate in monthly financial and work-in-progress reviews with executive leadership. Maintain accurate revenue and margin forecasts based on backlog, project schedules, service demand, and available resources. Monitor labor utilization, overtime, rework, warranty costs, and other drivers of departmental profitability. Ensure project managers and field leaders understand job budgets, labor allowances, purchasing requirements, and financial expectations. Identify financial risks early and implement corrective actions. Support timely and accurate billing, change-order management, collections, and project closeout. Establish and maintain appropriate pricing, labor rates, margin standards, and service-rate structures. Grow recurring revenue through inspections, testing, monitoring, preventive maintenance, and service agreements. Evaluate investments in personnel, training, equipment, inventory, software, and manufacturer partnerships based on expected financial and operational returns. Fire Alarm SystemsProvide technical oversight for fire alarm design, installation, programming, testing, inspection, service, and system modernization. Review drawings, specifications, code requirements, sequences of operation, battery calculations, voltage-drop calculations, and product selections. Support system programming, commissioning, troubleshooting, and final acceptance when required. Coordinate fire alarm interfaces with sprinkler systems, elevators, smoke control, HVAC, access control, emergency power, and other building systems. Ensure systems comply with NFPA 72, applicable building and fire codes, local amendments, contract documents, and manufacturer requirements. Maintain strong working relationships with Authorities Having Jurisdiction, engineers, contractors, manufacturers, and end users. Lead inspection preparation and assist with resolving deficiencies, code questions, or system-performance issues. Provide technical leadership for Notifier systems; direct Notifier experience is strongly preferred.

Estimating and Preconstruction: Support or oversee estimating, scope development, takeoffs, labor planning, equipment selection, and proposal review. Confirm that estimates include appropriate labor, material, programming, testing, permitting, inspection, documentation, and project-management requirements. Review major opportunities for scope completeness, technical compliance, commercial risk, and margin. Identify exclusions, assumptions, alternates, subcontracted work, and customer responsibilities. Support sales personnel during customer meetings, design discussions, and technical presentations. Maintain consistency between estimated scope, sold scope, project handoff, and field execution.

Project and Service Management: Review project handoffs, submittals, schedules, procurement plans, labor budgets, and closeout requirements. Monitor project progress, schedule performance, labor usage, financial results, and customer communication. Ensure changes in scope are documented, priced, authorized, and billed. Provide leadership for escalated service issues, system outages, inspection deficiencies, and customer concerns. Ensure service requests and deficiencies are addressed promptly and communicated clearly. Build predictable inspection, preventive-maintenance, monitoring, and service-agreement programs. Ensure complete project records, including permits, test reports, inspection records, as-built drawings, programming files, warranties, and closeout documents.

Quality, Safety, and Compliance: Ensure all work meets standards, contract requirements, manufacturer requirements, and applicable codes. Maintain required company and employee licenses, manufacturer certifications, continuing education, and training records. Conduct or assign field quality reviews and verify that deficiencies are corrected promptly. Establish consistent standards for installation, labeling, programming, testing, commissioning, inspection, and documentation. Reduce callbacks, rework, warranty costs, failed inspections, and preventable system issues. Promote safe work practices and ensure compliance with customer safety requirements.

Required Qualifications: NICET Level III certification in Fire Alarm Systems. At least seven years of progressive fire alarm or life-safety industry experience. Demonstrated experience leading technicians, projects, or a fire alarm and life-safety department. Experience managing departmental or project-level financial performance. Strong working knowledge of NFPA 72 and applicable fire, building, and life-safety codes. Experience with system design review, programming, commissioning, testing, inspection, service, and troubleshooting. Ability to interpret construction drawings, specifications, riser diagrams, sequences of operation, and technical documentation. Understanding of budgeting, forecasting, job costing, gross margin, labor productivity, change management, and work-in-progress reporting.