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Fire: don’t get burnt

Resident managers and body corporates may have more fire services systems in their buildings to manage than you can count on both hands.

For a full range of tips, check out our recent Body Corporate supplement, re-leased with the April issue of Resort News.

Fire service maintenance contractors will take care of regular statutory maintenance and issues but a number of issues can cause headaches and demand the attention of man-agers and the committee. These may include:

Unwanted alarms

Everyone hates it when the alarms start echoing through the building and the sirens of the fire brigade trucks start bellowing in the streets, espe-cially the guy who just burnt the toast! Then who pays the brigade call-out fee? Unwanted alarms can also be caused by aging detectors, poor original placement of detectors near apartment kitchens and laun-dries, and a variety of second-ary issues.

Accommodation buildings can be classified either Class 2 or Class 3 under building regu-lation and within each, or by changing classification, options exist to fully or partially dis-connect from automatic fire brigade call-out without reduc-ing the standard of fire safety required by legislation.

Rogue hydrant and sprin-kler pumps

These pumps are generally big and often noisy when they run. Fire pumps start automati-cally but must only be stopped by human intervention. If problems occur the pumps can start repeatedly and seemingly for no reason. Hydrant pumps in particular can run unnoticed in some locations, consuming fuel or electricity. Hydrant and sprinkler pumps sometimes destroy themselves under such circumstances, making for very expensive repairs.

The issue is usually water leaks in the pipework or valves, and sometimes these can be very hard to locate par-ticularly when underground. Leakage monitoring and pump activity monitoring systems can help resolve and head-off a lot of these problems, and let you know what’s really going on.

Misunderstood alternative solutions

An alternative solution, al-so known as a fire engineered solution, is a configuration of fire services and safety systems in the building that may be different, or operate different-ly, to standard or normal fire safety systems. These need to be understood by managers, the committee, and by fire maintenance contractors. Over time, accumulated minor changes can compromise these systems and the fire safety of occupants can be at risk.

At worst, deficiencies be-come evident after a fire and personal liability may come into question. Hopefully, fire brigade inspections and com-mittee system audits identify such issues but good manage-ment starts with good knowledge of the systems in-stalled in your building. Fire engineering reports make great bed-time reading, give yours a try!

Fire brigade inspections

Brigade officers do inspect buildings and also respond to issues they may be made aware of. If there are problems, they may issue a Critical Defects Notice, which must be acted on.

Don’t let your fire systems degenerate to this point as the brigade may shut down your building, and they certainly have the power to do that in the interests of occupant safety.

Fire and evacuation plans

Management and staff need to be trained and understand the actions to be taken. In a fire, the Brigade have no inter-est in fire hoses or extinguish-ers as these are not for them. Management must have poli-cies for staff use of these and ensure appropriate training.

Annual occupiers state-ment

Can you count ten passive and active fire safety systems in your building? If not, you may not be trying hard enough. Maybe you have one fire maintenance contractor looking after all of them and none are being denied statutorily re-quired maintenance?

Fire maintenance contrac-tors will compile their annual statements but it is up to the committee generally to consol-idate their own statement from these and lodge it with the bri-gade on an annual basis. Sign-ing this should be done with full understanding.

Major fire services works

Fire services work or any significant capital works (all defined as building work) should be done with Australian Standard conditions of contract as the fine-print on quotations may be woefully lop-sided or not address important legisla-tive issues. In Queensland, and elsewhere, the manager or committee must formally ap-point a principal contractor or risk unknowingly carrying this responsibility themselves. Criminal liability may flow to managers or the committee members if this is done incor-rectly and there is an injury or death during the course of the work.

A good place to start

If you recognise any of the above as issues, discussing them with a technically quali-fied project manager may be a good place to start. With a gen-eral working knowledge of all systems, such a person knows where to go and who to speak to in order to quickly get at the heart of any issue and instigate appropriate action in the most effective way.

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