What are operator obligations (Betreiberpflichten)?

The main legal basis is the duty of care (Verkehrssicherungspflicht) under Section 823 of the German Civil Code (BGB): anyone who creates or maintains a source of danger must take reasonable precautions so that nobody comes to harm. The state building codes, the Industrial Safety Ordinance for installations such as lifts, and occupational and fire safety rules come on top. In facility management, the GEFMA 190 guideline summarises operator responsibility. Breaches can lead to damages, fines and, in serious cases, criminal liability of the management.

Operators delegate duties to service providers by contract. Winter services, caretaking, guarding or inspections are passed to the building service provider contractually. The duty to select and supervise stays with the operator; the provider has to prove fulfilment. In winter services, the duty to clear and grit is the typical example. Property managers expect a caretaking service to run an emergency hotline and to be on site within two to four hours (praedium Frankfurt, as of 10/2026).

Without documentation, the duty counts as unfulfilled in a dispute. What matters is when a hazard was reported, who took the report and what happened next. In winter services, a complete record from alert to route to completion is a standard requirement (ase-edv, as of 10/2026). The gap usually opens at the start of the chain: the report comes by phone, at night, onto a voicemail. Clients increasingly demand this evidence in tenders, and round-the-clock availability is becoming an award criterion.

This is where phone-based fault intake comes in. Empfango answers fault and hazard reports around the clock, records caller, callback number, site, location and type of fault and files transcript and summary with a timestamp in the dashboard. The report goes to the on-call team via WhatsApp, email or webhook; with the partner product LiteLog it lands directly in the LiteLog portal, where completion is documented. The result is a fault log that proves time of report and response, even without LiteLog. Every caller hears a fixed announcement at the start that an AI assistant is speaking; processing runs in the EU.

For caretaking and facility services this is the most common use case, see 24/7 fault intake and AI phone assistant for caretaking services. For security companies, incident documentation belongs in the guard logbook. Which duties apply in a specific case is governed by the contract with the client; this article is not legal advice. Anyone taking on winter services or guarding should agree the reporting chain with the client in writing: who takes the call, who decides, who documents.