WestPoint · Fire detection
Here a failure is never noticed. Until the one day.
Fire detection: project, detectors, control panel, coordination with the rest of the installation, testing and inspections. It is the area we negotiate on least, and the only one we would rather walk away from than do half-done.
A fire system does not tell you it is wrong.
A badly placed camera can be seen: somebody opens the mosaic and there is the hedge. A door that does not open is noticed on day one. A badly placed detector is never noticed. It is there, with its LED, in an installation that passed commissioning, and everybody assumes it works because there is no reason to think otherwise.
Same with a zone left uncovered because a mezzanine went in halfway through the works, with a control panel whose fault messages nobody has looked at in eighteen months, or with an installation that has not been tested end to end since the day it was handed over. None of the three shows any sign of life. All three are discovered on the same day, and on that day the failure no longer costs money: it costs something else.
That is why this area is not run like the others. Here «we'll check it when there is budget» does not do, and not because the regulations say so: because it is the only part of a security installation where the margin of error is measured in people.
What gets decided in the project.
Detect a fire early, and do not detect a fire that is not there. Both come out of the same decision: which detector goes where.
There is no good detector: there is a detector suited to each place. Where there is dust, steam, exhaust smoke or the fumes from a forklift, a smoke detector will give false alarms until somebody disconnects it — and a disconnected detector is worse than none, because it still appears on the drawings. There are places where what you have to detect is heat, others where you have to detect flame, and others where you have to draw in the air and analyse it because you need to know very early.
Then there is height and spacing. A twelve-metre ceiling, a mezzanine, a suspended ceiling with cabling inside, a lift shaft or an aisle of racks are not covered like an office, because in none of those places does the smoke reach the ceiling the way it would in an office.
And there is what the air does. Air conditioning moving air can carry the smoke away before it reaches the detector. That is not visible on a drawing: it is thought through in the project, with the site's maintenance person in the room.
The day it goes off, five things have to happen at once.
Alert the people inside, and in a way that makes it clear which way out to take. Open what has to open: the escape doors, the turnstiles, the car park barrier. Close what has to close: the doors that block the passage of smoke. Stop what has to stop: the air conditioning that is moving that smoke, and some machinery. And know who is still inside, which is the first thing whoever turns up to help will ask.
Fire detection does none of those five things on its own. It does them by talking to the access control, to the ventilation, to the public address system and to whoever is watching the cameras. That is four or five coordinated systems, and they only coordinate if somebody thought about them together.
It is the underlying reason why this area is not bought separately, from whichever supplier quoted it cheapest. Flawless detection that cannot open a door because the access control belongs to another company and they do not talk to each other is not half a solution: it is a new problem.
The paperwork, which here is part of the system.
Fire protection is the most regulated part of a security installation. There are regulations on what equipment may be fitted, how it is installed, who may sign off, what inspections have to be done, how often and who may do them. It is not added bureaucracy: it is how this trade makes itself checkable by somebody outside.
In practice that means the system comes with a schedule and a file. The schedule says what gets inspected and when. The file holds what was done, who did it and what the result was. When the file is missing, what you have is an installation that probably works and cannot be proven to, and that turns up at the inspection, at the insurance renewal and in the investigation of any incident.
We hand over both and we keep them up. And we flag the uncomfortable part: keeping to that schedule costs money every year, not just the year of the installation. It is worth knowing before signing, and not the first time an invoice for an inspection arrives.
Where we say no.
It is the one line we would rather walk away from than sign half-done.
It happens more than you would think: an overall quotation that does not add up, and somebody suggests trimming here because it is the part nobody will miss. Fitting fewer detectors than the project says. Covering the main area and leaving the warehouse at the back for later. Handing over without having tested the whole installation. Signing off the works and leaving the maintenance out of the contract so the number in the bid comes down.
Any of those four can be done. The system switches on just the same, passes commissioning just the same and nothing shows for years. And all four transfer the entire risk to the client without the client knowing, with our signature underneath.
So the answer is no. It is not a moral posture: it is that if something happens one day and that installation carries our name, we have to be able to explain every decision that was taken. We would rather lose the job entirely —and we have lost it— than keep it by trimming here.
And it works in the other direction too: if there is something we cannot resolve on the budget or the deadlines available, it gets said in the first meeting. What we will not do is discover it halfway through the works, when it is too late for the client to decide something else.
What gets tested and what gets handed over.
A fire installation is handed over tested point by point, or it is not handed over.
- Every detector, tested one at a time, checking that the control panel identifies it in the place it actually is and not the one on the label. A badly labelled zone sends whoever turns up to help to the wrong part of the building.
- The complete sequence, not the individual detector: that when it triggers, what has to sound sounds, what has to open opens, what has to close closes and what has to stop stops.
- That the alert leaves the building. Who it reaches, how long it takes and what happens if nobody answers. Tested, with the phone in your hand.
- The certificate, with the date, with the result for each point and with the signature of whoever tested it. Not a summary saying «installation correct».
- The drawings of what is there, with every detector and every zone, put up where people look at them and not just in a PDF in somebody's inbox.
- Training for the people who are there every day: what each thing on the control panel means, what to do with a fault message, what to do with an alarm and what never to do. A system nobody can read is a siren sounding while three people wonder what that LED means.
How you check it yourself.
Four things, with no technical knowledge, this week and on the installation you already have.
- Look at the control panel. If there is a fault message lit and nobody knows since when, the system has been incomplete for a while and nobody has noticed.
- Ask for the certificate from the last inspection and see whether it goes detector by detector. If it says «installation inspected, correct», you have been told nothing.
- Take the drawings and look for any detector in the place the drawing says it is. It is the quickest check there is for knowing whether the documentation belongs to the system that exists or to the project drawn up before the works.
- Ask two people on the shift what they do if it sounds. If the two answers are nothing alike, training is missing — and no new equipment fixes that.
The other seven areas.
The day it goes off, fire detection commands the doors, the alarm and what has to be looked at. That is why it is designed with them.
The control panels and the detection systems.
And the boundary again, because here it is the one that avoids the most misunderstandings: we do the electronics —detection, alarm, evacuation, control panels and integration— and we do not do the water. Sprinklers, dry risers, hose reels and pressure sets are another trade, with a different licence.
What people ask about the regulations.
The ones that come up most. There are 42 on this subject, and the other 36 are in the question index.
All the questions, by subject▸Am I required to have a fire detection system?
It depends on the use of the building and its floor area, and it is not one regulation that decides but three. In new build and in refurbishments of non-industrial buildings, the Código Técnico de la Edificación (the Spanish building code) governs, and specifically its Basic Document DB-SI. In industrial premises, RSCIEI governs — the fire safety regulation for industrial premises, approved by Royal Decree 2267/2004. And over any installation already in place, RIPCI governs, Royal Decree 513/2017: what equipment is acceptable, who installs it, who maintains it and how often.
The most common confusion is believing that one of the three replaces the others. CTE or RSCIEI say WHAT has to be fitted; RIPCI says HOW it is fitted, with what product and what has to be done with it in the years that follow. A building can meet CTE on the day of the licence and be in breach of RIPCI three years later because nobody has inspected anything.
And there is a fourth source of obligation that is not a technical standard: the council's activity licence, the insurance policy and, where applicable, the self-protection plan. All three can ask for more than the regulatory minimum, and all three are looked at before designing, not after.
▸What is RIPCI and what exactly does it require me to do?
RIPCI is the regulation on fire protection installations, approved by Royal Decree 513/2017, and it governs three things: the products that may be installed, the companies that may install and maintain them, and the compulsory maintenance of what is installed. It replaced Royal Decree 1942/1993 and, unlike that one, its maintenance regime also reaches installations that already existed.
For a building owner it comes down to four concrete obligations: that the equipment carries the conformity that applies to it, that a licensed company installs and maintains it, that the operations are carried out at the intervals in its Annex II, and that there is a written record of each one. That record is what you show at an inspection; without it, the installation does not count as maintained even if it is.
What RIPCI does not say is how many detectors your building needs. That is said by CTE or RSCIEI depending on the case, and the actual spacing is said by UNE 23007-14.
▸What does the CTE say, and above what floor area does it require detection?
DB-SI is the Building Code document setting fire safety in non-industrial buildings, and it has six sections: internal spread, external spread, evacuation of occupants, protection installations, fire brigade intervention and fire resistance of the structure. The one that says whether detection is needed is SI 4, with its table 1.1, and the thresholds go by use and by built floor area.
In Hospital use, detection and alarm in all cases. In Public Residential —hotels and similar—, from 500 m². In Public Assembly, detection from 1,000 m², and an alarm system when occupancy exceeds 500 people, in which case it has to be able to issue voice messages over the public address system. In Administrative, Educational and Retail, alarm from 1,000 m² and detection from 2,000 m². In conventional car parks, detection from 500 m². In Residential Dwellings, only when the evacuation height exceeds 50 m.
They are worth reading for what they are: minimums designed so that people get out in time. Below the threshold you can install detection anyway, and in many places it pays to, because the threshold is not designed so that the building and what is inside it still exist the next day.
▸I have an industrial unit, which regulation applies to me?
RSCIEI, Royal Decree 2267/2004, and its thresholds do not go by square metres alone: they go by the configuration of the building and by the intrinsic risk level. The configuration is type A, B or C depending on whether the premises share a structure with others, are attached, or stand alone. The intrinsic risk —low, medium or high— comes out of a fire load calculation based on what is inside and how it is stored.
With those two things you get the automatic detection thresholds in its Annex III. In type A, 300 m² for production activities and 150 m² for storage, whatever the risk. In type B with medium risk, 2,000 and 1,000 m²; with high risk, 1,000 and 500. In type C with medium risk, 3,000 and 1,500 m²; with high risk, 2,000 and 800. Where the automatic detection threshold is not reached, what has to be fitted is manual call points, and the maximum distance to be walked to reach one must not exceed 25 m.
The intrinsic risk calculation is not a licence formality: it is the figure everything else hangs off, including compartmentation and how often you have to be inspected. It is done with the real warehouse inventory, and it changes the day the product being stored changes. Nobody outside will tell you that.
Fire regulations in industrial use Industry: units seen in a real scene
▸What is UNE 23007-14 and why does everyone mention it?
It is the standard that says how a detection and alarm system is designed, installed, commissioned and maintained. CTE and RSCIEI say whether it is needed; UNE 23007-14 says where each detector goes, how much area it covers, how the building is divided into zones, what is checked at commissioning and what is done at each inspection. RIPCI refers to it, so it is not a good-practice recommendation.
The numbers a project is argued over come from it: the area one detector watches, the maximum distance from any point to the nearest detector, the ceiling height above which a point detector stops being any use, the maximum size of a zone and how far you can have to walk inside one looking for the element that went off.
It is also the one requiring that every detector be tested within a twelve-month period. Maintenance limited to looking at the control panel does not meet that part, and it is the easiest to spot by reading a certificate.
▸What does it mean for equipment to comply with UNE-EN 54?
The UNE-EN 54 series is the product standard: each part defines what a type of equipment has to meet and how it is tested. Part 2 is the control panel, part 4 the power supply, part 5 heat detectors, part 7 point smoke detectors, part 10 flame detectors, part 11 manual call points, part 12 optical beam line detectors, parts 16 and 24 voice alarm systems and their loudspeakers, part 17 short-circuit isolators, part 20 aspirating detectors, part 23 visual alarm devices, part 26 carbon monoxide detectors and part 28 non-resettable heat-sensitive cable.
Equipment carrying CE marking referred to its part of EN 54 means it has passed those tests in a laboratory and that a notified body oversees production. It is the minimum, and RIPCI requires it. Where there is no harmonised standard, the regulation asks instead for a certificate of conformity issued by an accredited body.
What the marking does not say is that two pieces of equipment from different brands will work together. Compatibility between the components of a system is another matter and is declared separately: in practice, a loop is built with elements from the same house as the control panel unless the manufacturer says otherwise in writing.
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When was it last tested end to end?
If the answer is the day of handover, there is work to do. Tell us what the installation is, what is fitted and what documentation exists, and we will tell you what is missing. If what is needed does not fit the budget available, we will tell you that in the same conversation.