What You Need To Know About Fire Watch Guards

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 be called out for no reason if your alarm system is automated. We should all do what we can to be certain that the Fire Services are free to deal with real emergencies.

If false alarms occur ordinarily, also they can have a real and disruptive impact 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 having a specific manual request. Which 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 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 due to same small fault. Even worse, it might be a signal that an element of the alarm just click the following internet page 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 brought on by people in the building not being aware that a fire alarm system is in place, or at least not understanding the kinds of thing that will activate the fire alarm. You can cope with these by way of a few simple procedures:

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

Make these facts 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 following 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 sure 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 really is 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 that will undertake work on the premises.

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

Make certain that somebody has specific personal responsibility for managing this and similar matters.

If possible, smoke detectors may be replaced with heat detectors, but only by an experienced engineer.

The alternative to swapping to heat detectors is to cover and protect the smoke detectors during 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, within the event of a real fire.

The matter should be risk assessed, and alternative means of detection put in place (for example a person within the area with specific fire-watching brief during the period of works).

Make certain in which somebody 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.

Ensure that the fire alarm system is tested once the work is completed, to be certain that it really is functioning correctly.