Benefits of maintenance The benefits that flow from good and proper maintenance are not, however, limited to the avoidance of prison sentences under the Fire Safety Order or an assurance that the brigade will still attend. Fire alarm systems operate day and night, keeping watch over buildings and their occupants. While they are often better known for false alarms than saving lives, this ‘reputation’ serves to mask the threat that inadequate systems may fail to alarm on time or, perhaps, at all. A fire alarm system that functions as designed does not make its presence known until it needs to and, at this point, needs be relied upon to detect a fire and alarm those in a position to respond. When a fire alarm system is called upon to work, there is an emergency at hand and we need it to work totally reliably. There is no time to perform maintenance or repairs during the emergency. Fire alarm system reliability does not happen on its own. It is affected by four key variables: system design, equipment, installation, and maintenance. After the design and installation are completed, the only variable we can easily control is the level of maintenance provided to the system but through this we can identify and remedy so much more. Proper maintenance allows not only system (even original design) problems to be highlighted and remedied, but also environment changes to be identified so that appropriate system changes can be implemented. Realistically, in modern fire alarm systems suffering false alarms, the equipment is usually not at fault. Instead, the match of equipment to environment (and vice versa) needs attention. Planned, proper and thorough maintenance will highlight such mismatches, enable remedial measures to be implemented and problems to be avoided. A proper maintenance programme achieves two goals. On the one hand it addresses false alarm problems (actual and incipient) and is probably the single most powerful weapon in the battle against false alarms. Victory in the battle brings more resources for brigades, regained productivity gains for the economy and rebuilding of confidence in fire alarm systems from those who very lives may depend upon them. In addition, it helps assure that the system can be relied on to alert to fire and save lives. All in all, powerful reasons for good maintenance.
Cheap maintenance or good maintenance? The difficulty for the User and/or Responsible Person is to establish what they are getting for their money: how do they know who to ask for maintenance prices; how do they know
“Good maintenance requires the inpidual doing the work to have the time, knowledge and equipment to do the work properly”
良好的维护要求从事工作的个人有足够的时间、知识和设备来正确地完成工作。
what to expect; and how, for example, do they ensure that they are getting the right service level? The answer lies in the word ‘competence’. But what is competence? The BFPSA [now FIA] Installers and Maintainers Commercial Section has developed a definition as follows: “Competency is a measure of the overall ability of a person or organisation to deliver a best practice, qualitative solution to a task. The assessment of competency is complex and draws on: