Your Most Burning Questions Regarding Fire Watch Services

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

If false alarms occur many times, also they can have a real and disruptive impact on your business and productivity. The additional negative impact can be that if you have too many false alarms, the Fire Services will not respond without having a specific manual request. That is not good news if you ever have a real fire.

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

Many false alarms are a result of people within the building not being aware that a fire alarm system is in place, or at least not understanding the kinds of thing that may activate the fire alarm. You can 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."

Ensure that no-one carries out any 'hot works' without permission from the Well being as well as Safety Representative, fire Marshall, or whoever has responsibility for authorising such works

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

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

Have a Hot Works Permit system or similar mechanism to ensure 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.

Ensure that no work involving the generation of dust or 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 as well as 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 matter should be risk assessed, and alternative means of detection put in place (such as someone within the area with specific fire-watching brief throughout the period of works).

Make sure in which somebody has the specific personal responsibility for removing the covering from the detectors when the work is finished. It really is vital that this is done promptly in order that the alarm system is fully functional straight away.

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