Three Incredibly Useful Tips Involving Fire Watch Services

While emergency evacuation drills are good practice in fire safety as well as a key part of staff training, false alarms can simply be a waste of everyone's time. Not least for the emergency services, who could possibly be called out for no reason if your alarm system is automated. We should all do what we can to ensure that the Fire Services are free to handle real emergencies.

If false alarms occur on a regular basis, they may have a real and disruptive effect on your business and productivity. Another negative impact may be that if you have too many false alarms, the Fire Services will not respond without a specific manual request. That is not good news if you ever have a real fire.

A false alarm may be a symptom of a fault on your system, so they should never be ignored. If you can't find the cause of an alarm activation, it is always best to call within an engineer to investigate the problem. The last thing you will need is for the exact same thing to happen a day or two later as a result of same small fault. Even worse, it may be a signal that an element of the alarm just isn't properly functioning, which could have a serious impact within the event of a real fire, allowing the fire to spread much more than it otherwise might.

Many false alarms are brought on by people in the building not being aware that a Fire Watch Guards alarm system is in place, or at least not understanding the types of thing that may activate the fire alarm. You may cope with these by way of a few simple procedures:

Ensure staff and visitors know that your building is protected by an automatic fire alarm system

Make this data part of your induction training and fire safety training for all staff.

Have prominent notices up at all main entrances to your workplace. Use the next wording: "These premises are protected by an automatic fire alarm system. Please obtain permission from the site manager before undertaking any work involving flame, smoke, heat or sparks."

Make certain that no-one carries out any 'hot works' without permission from the Health and Safety Representative, fire Marshall, or whoever has responsibility for authorising such works

Staff must know that any work involving flame, smoke, heat or sparks must have special permission.

Build this into staff training and ensure it is included in staff manuals, operating plans, etc.

Have a Hot Works Permit system or similar mechanism to make certain that contractors working on site follow your safe working procedures.

Build this requirement into contracts with any contractors whom shall undertake work on the premises.

Make certain that no work involving the generation of dust or perhaps the usage of spray paint is done in an area with smoke detectors in, unless the detectors are properly protected.

Make sure that someone has specific personal responsibility for managing this and similar matters.

If possible, smoke detectors may be replaced with heat detectors, but only by a qualified engineer.

The alternative to swapping to heat detectors is to cover and protect the smoke detectors through the period of work (with paper, plastic, etc).

This should not be done lightly, as covered smoke detectors will clearly not work correctly, if at all, in the event of a real fire.

The situation should be risk assessed, and alternative means of detection put in place (such as someone within the area with specific fire-watching brief through the period of works).

Make sure that someone has the specific personal responsibility for removing the covering from the detectors in the event the work is finished. It is vital that this is done promptly so that the alarm system is fully functional straight away.

Make sure that the fire alarm system is tested once the work is completed, to ensure that it's functioning correctly.