What You Don t Know About Fire Watch Guards

While emergency evacuation drills are good practice Going in publicacoesacademicas.unicatolicaquixada.edu.br 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 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 handle real emergencies.

If false alarms occur on a regular basis, they can have a real and disruptive impact on your business and productivity. Another negative impact can be that should you have too many false alarms, the Fire Services will not respond without a specific manual request. Which is not great 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 not find the cause of an alarm activation, it is always best to call in 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 due to same small fault. Even worse, it might be a signal that an element of the alarm isn't 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 in the building not being aware that a fire alarm system is in place, or at least not knowing the kinds of thing that will activate the fire alarm. You can handle these through a few simple procedures:

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

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

Have prominent notices up at all main entrances to your place of work. 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 Health and Safety Representative, fire Marshall, or whoever has responsibility for authorising such works

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

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

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

Build this requirement into contracts with any contractors who will undertake work on the premises.

Ensure that no work involving the generation of dust or even the use of spray paint is performed within an area with smoke detectors in, unless the detectors are properly protected.

Ensure that someone has specific personal responsibility for dealing with 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 certainly will not be done lightly, as covered smoke detectors will clearly not work correctly, if at all, in the event of a real fire.

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

Ensure that someone has the specific personal responsibility for removing the covering from the detectors when the work is finished. It's vital that this really is done promptly in order that the alarm system is fully functional straight away.

Make sure that the fire alarm system is tested after the work is completed, to make sure that it is functioning correctly.