About Fire Watch Orlando
The officers who stand these watches are employed and deployed by Nexus Security Firm, a licensed Florida security agency working under FDACS Class "B" agency license B 1900066 from an office at 3203 Lawton Rd in Orlando. What follows is who answers the phone, what happens when you call, how to check the license, and what a watch looks like hour by hour.
- FDACS Class "B" agency license B 1900066
- Dispatch answered around the clock, every day
- Round logs written for your AHJ and your carrier
Who runs the agency
Nexus Security Firm was founded by James Franklin, who spent more than 15 years in law enforcement before starting it. That background shows up in how a watch is run: posts get written orders, officers are told what the authority having jurisdiction will ask for, and the log is kept so it survives being read by an inspector. A watch that cannot produce a record of what was covered and when is a watch that did not happen.
The agency behind the watch
Nexus Security Firm is a Florida security agency that employs its own officers and puts them on post. The agency holds FDACS Class "B" agency license B 1900066, issued by the Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services Division of Licensing, and every officer works under Chapter 493 with an individual Class "D" license behind them. The office is at 3203 Lawton Rd, Orlando, FL 32803, a few minutes east of downtown.
Fire watch is the narrow end of that work and it behaves differently from standing guard contracts. The calls arrive with a deadline attached, the job is defined by what a code or a carrier requires instead of by what a client would like, and the deliverable is a written record somebody official is going to read. That is the work this desk is set up for.
Who answers the phone and when
The dispatch line is staffed 24 hours a day, every day of the year, including holidays and through storm recovery, because fire alarm panels fail at two in the morning more often than at two in the afternoon. The person who picks up can take the building details, start the sizing conversation and reach a supervisor, and on an urgent call a supervisor comes onto the line during the same call.
Written contact comes in through the lead form, which routes to the same desk. Planned work, impairment schedules, floor plans and quote requests all go that way, and a supervisor comes back to you on them. During business hours the Lawton Road office is the right place for contract paperwork, certificates of insurance and anything a board or a general contractor needs for a vendor file.
What happens on a first call
The first call is a sizing conversation and it takes about five minutes. We ask for the building address, the occupancy type, what is out of service, the time it went out, how many floors and stairwells the building has, and what your authority having jurisdiction or your insurance carrier has already asked for. If a round interval has been given to you, that is the single most useful thing you can have in front of you.
From that, we work out the round time, the officer count the round forces, and the hourly rate that applies to the shift pattern. You get those three numbers on the call along with what is available and when. On planned work, the same conversation happens further ahead and includes a site walk to time the route properly. We will tell you when a smaller watch would satisfy your AHJ, and we will tell you when the pattern you are hoping for will not.
The license and how to check it
The agency license is FDACS Class "B" number B 1900066 and it is public record. The Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services runs a free public license lookup, so a board member, a risk manager, a fire marshal or an insurance adjuster can confirm the agency status without contacting us at all.
Officers hold individual Class "D" licenses, which require 40 hours of FDACS-approved training and are valid for two years (FDACS Division of Licensing). Those are searchable in the same place. Fire watch is unarmed work, so the Class "G" armed license does not come into it. When you are comparing agencies, ask each one for its Class "B" number in writing and run all of them, and hold certificates of general liability and workers compensation insurance before the first shift.
What a fire watch post looks like hour to hour
An officer arrives, meets your on-site contact, and walks the route with them once before anything else happens, confirming which areas are impaired, where the extinguishers and fire department connections are, which doors and gates need keys, and who gets called at three in the morning. Then the rounds start, timed to the interval your AHJ set, and each one is written into the log with the time, the areas covered and anything found.
Between rounds the officer stays in the building and stays on the post. There is no other duty attached, which is the part of the arrangement the code cares about most. A supervisor is assigned to every watch and attends the post while it runs, including on the overnight shifts, and on watches longer than a single shift the handover happens on post with the log passed across so the incoming officer inherits the route and the open items. At stand-down, the completed log goes to you.
Where we cover
Orlando and the surrounding metro is the core of it: downtown, the International Drive and tourism corridor, Lake Nona and the Medical City area, Winter Park, Maitland, Altamonte Springs, the UCF student housing ring, Apopka, Ocoee, Winter Garden, Kissimmee, Sanford and Lake Mary. That covers Orange, Seminole and Osceola counties and the eastern side of Lake County.
The Class "B" agency license is a Florida license and it is valid statewide, so coverage outside the metro is a question of scheduling and notice instead of licensing. For a planned impairment anywhere in the state, ask. For an emergency outside the Orlando area, ask anyway, and you will get an honest answer on the call about what can be staffed and when.
What this agency is set up to do well
Watches sized from the building instead of from a price sheet
The officer count on a fire watch comes out of how long a full round of the impaired area takes against the interval your AHJ set, and we time that route before quoting it. A building sold a single officer for a route that takes twice the interval to walk has bought a watch that fails the first time an inspector asks to see the log.
Florida enforces the fire watch requirement through the Florida Fire Prevention Code under Chapter 633.
Licensed officers with numbers you can run
FDACS Class "B" agency license B 1900066 for the agency, Class "D" licenses for the officers, each backed by 40 hours of FDACS-approved training, all of it searchable on the Division of Licensing lookup. The agency number is published openly so a carrier filling in an impairment form or a board approving a contract can check it without asking.
Licensing for a Class "D" officer in Florida follows 40 hours of approved training (FDACS Division of Licensing).
Relief treated as part of the job
Every watch longer than one shift has its relief scheduled at booking and a supervisor responsible for filling a gap. Industry turnover reached 77% in 2024 (ASIS International), which makes coverage of the callout the difference between a watch and a story about a watch, and it is the first thing worth asking any agency you are comparing.
Security industry turnover hit 77% in 2024 (ASIS International).
Questions about the agency
The first group is about who we are and how we work. The second is about hiring, licensing and coverage.
Talk to the dispatch desk
Call with the building address and what is out of service, or send the impairment schedule through the form if the work is planned. The line is answered at every hour, and the agency license number is B 1900066 if you want to check it first.