RiskXtraJune2019

FIRE SAFETY
“We’ve lived by BS 5839-6 for almost a quarter of a century
now and the standard has served us well. There’s no doubt
that it has helped to save lives. BS 5839-6:2019 builds on the
success of the original document”
‘compliance’. However, the standard is
considered Best Practice and those who choose
to ignore it do so at their own risk. Certainly,
social housing organisations place great
emphasis on it and complying with it is
regarded as being essential.
Many RSLs have been moving towards LD2
systems over the past year in the anticipation of
the revisions and we’re now witnessing a large
number rewriting their alarm specifications
accordingly and planning upgrade programmes
as part of their overall process.
With the 2019 revisions, we’ve benefited
from greater clarity and, in a number of cases,
an increase in the level of fire protection. Of
course, with this comes a need for additional
alarms per property which has an associated
cost, not just in alarm units, but also in terms of
installation. Some of this cost can be mitigated
by using wireless alarm interconnection
technology and by employing alarms that have
been designed to be quick and easy to install.
Control and maintenance
With larger fire alarm systems come issues over
control and maintenance as more alarms will
need to be tested. It’s important to be able to
locate the precise alarm which originally
triggered. In these cases, an alarm controller
should be considered (especially important if a
Carbon Monoxide alarm is included in the
system). These wall-mounted devices feature
test, silence and locate features, subsequently
adding an extremely valuable extra measure of
controllability to an LD2 system.
We’ve lived by BS 5839-6 for almost a quarter
of a century now and there’s no doubt that the
standard has served us well. There’s also no
doubt that it has helped to save lives. BS 5839-
6:2019 builds on the success of the original
document and, if adhered to in the correct
manner, should always ensure greater safety and
even better practice across the industry.
www.fia.uk.com