NFPA Journal - March/April 2018 - 52

Perspectives
they're 800,000 to a million square feet. We categorize the buildings by the kind of inventory they hold
and fulfill-large-sized items or small-sized items-
and that means different kinds of technologies,
conveyance systems, and formats. Each facility, on
average, employs about 1,500 full-time associates.
Something that every national or international facility has to deal with is maintaining
consistent safety across their facilities
despite being located in different jurisdictions that adopt different codes and
standards. How does Amazon do this?
Well, we always start with whatever codes or
standards a jurisdiction is using, so local counties or townships we're operating in are satisfied.
We want to do whatever is appropriate for that
geography and starting with the jurisdiction is
the way we do that. Beyond that, we have our
own standard operating system, and we try to
configure our fulfillment centers in such a way
that there are commonalities between them so
we can share best practices and things we might
learn from one facility to another.

What's something that's consistent at your
facilities regardless of location based on the
standard operating system you mentioned?
One thing we standardize across our facilities is
the walkway for employees, which runs throughout the facility. We make sure it's very wide so
that employees can easily and quickly make their
way through the fulfillment center-from the
main entrance to the break room to their work
stations-and that it is a safe distance from any
moving machinery or other equipment.
Traditionally, warehouses have been configured to house commodities that pose the
same, or at least similar, storage hazards. At
Amazon's fulfillment centers, though, the
range of commodities is huge. How do you
account for that in the way those facilities are
protected?
We certainly have a lot of different products
inside these facilities, and we don't store like
products together. We store them by size. In
other words, you're not going to find all the
books stored with other books. In reality, you'd

When we're configuring
a fulfillment center, all the
rack heights and flue spaces
and automatic fire sprinkler
systems are going to be
designed and installed to
the highest commodity
hazard that we could possibly
have in there. In other words,
there aren't portions of
the building that have a
less robust fire suppression
system than others.

nfpa.org/
perspectives
WATCH a video
showing one of
Amazon's millionsquare-foot fulfillment centers in
action.

What's an example of a facility that might be
different from another because of the jurisdiction where it's located?
California is the obvious example. The state
building code includes provisions to protect
structures from earthquakes. It requires, for
example, masonry and other building materials
to be tested to pass code requirements. So our
facilities in California would adhere to those
rules, whereas our facilities in areas that don't
experience earthquakes wouldn't.

52 | NFPA JOURNAL * M A R C H /A P R I L 2 0 1 8

find books alongside cellphones alongside other
smaller goods. By randomly stowing inventory
in our libraries, we can optimize cubic space and
therefore have more inventory on hand for customers to order.
Because this is our process, we have to achieve
a level of safety that's appropriate for the highest-hazard item that might be present inside a
facility. So when we're configuring a fulfillment
center, all the rack heights and flue spaces and
automatic fire sprinkler systems are going to be

GETT Y IMAGES

Paul Pace, Amazon of North America's
director of environmental health and safety.

http://www.nfpa.org/perspectives

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of NFPA Journal - March/April 2018