The Fundamentals Of Fire Watch Guards Revealed

While emergency evacuation drills are good practice in fire safety and a key part of staff training, false alarms can simply click the following website page 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 guarantee that the Fire Services are free to cope with real emergencies.

If false alarms occur often, they can have a real and disruptive effect 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 with no 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 not find the cause of an alarm activation, it really is always best to call within an engineer to investigate the problem. The very last thing you may need is for the exact same thing to happen a day or two later as a result of same small fault. Even worse, it could possibly be a signal that an element of the alarm just isn't properly functioning, which could have a serious impact in the event of a real fire, allowing the fire to spread a lot more than it otherwise might.

Many false alarms are caused by 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 may deal with 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 Well being as well as 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 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 which will undertake work on the premises.

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

Make sure in which somebody 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 an experienced 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, within the event of a real fire.

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

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

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