Our engineers complete more than 2,000 planned maintenance visits a month and attended 2,108 reactive call-outs last year. Fire alarm maintenance is the core of what we do, and it is where a contractor either earns trust or loses it: turning up when planned, finding the fault first time, and leaving behind paperwork that a regulator will accept.
We are an Advanced and Apollo house, with factory-trained engineers and panel-level diagnostics for MxPro and Axis systems, but we maintain whatever is on the wall: Gent, Kentec, C-Tec, Morley, Hochiki, Ziton and legacy conventional panels included. Where a system is life-expired we tell you, with a phased upgrade plan that reuses sound cabling and devices.
What a planned visit includes
- Visual inspection of the panel, event and fault logs, batteries and power supplies.
- Functional test of a proportion of devices so that every detector, call point and sounder is tested within the year, as BS 5839-1 Section 6 requires.
- Test of the cause-and-effect programme: door releases, plant shutdown, lift grounding, interfaces to suppression and smoke control.
- Check of the interface to the alarm receiving centre where the system is monitored.
- Review of the logbook and the weekly test record, with advice to the responsible person where the record is incomplete.
- A BS 5839-1 inspection and servicing certificate, a defect report graded by risk, and photographs, all uploaded to your portal before the engineer leaves site.
Reactive call-outs
One helpdesk number, staffed 24 hours a day. Faults are logged, prioritised and dispatched to the nearest engineer with the right stock on the van. Priority 1 (system down, panel in fault, persistent false alarms) carries an out-of-hours attendance target of 3 hours. Every attendance produces a report with the cause, the fix and any follow-on work, in the portal within the hour.
For housing providers and estates
Maintaining hundreds of systems across dispersed stock is a logistics problem as much as an engineering one. We plan programmes by geography, give the notice periods your tenancy agreements require, manage no-access with three evidenced attempts, and report programme compliance, first-time fix and no-access percentages monthly against your KPIs. Asset data is exported in the format your asset register needs, with each device tagged for the golden thread under the Building Safety Act 2022.
Contract options
| Level | Includes | Suits |
|---|---|---|
| Planned only | Six-monthly visits, certificates, portal access, helpdesk | Sites with an in-house team for first response |
| Planned plus reactive | As above plus 24/7 call-outs at agreed rates and SLAs | Most commercial and public buildings |
| Fully comprehensive | As above with parts and labour included, monthly KPI reporting, asset register management | Housing providers, NHS estates, framework contracts |
Frequently asked
How often must a fire alarm be serviced?
BS 5839-1 recommends inspection and servicing at intervals not exceeding six months, by a competent person, with all devices tested over the course of a year. The responsible person must also arrange a weekly test of a different manual call point each week and record it in the logbook. High-risk sleeping premises are often serviced quarterly.
Can you take over a system someone else installed?
Yes, and most contracts we win are exactly that. The first visit is a full survey against BS 5839-1: we record every device, check the cause-and-effect, review the logbook and give you a written condition report with any non-conformances graded by risk before we quote any remedial work.
What is your response time for a fault?
The helpdesk is staffed 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. Our out-of-hours target is an engineer on site within 3 hours for a Priority 1 fault such as a panel in fault, a system down or persistent false alarms. Contract SLAs are agreed with you and reported monthly.
Do you help reduce false alarms?
Yes. False alarms are the single biggest cause of fire alarm complaints, and Fire and Rescue Services increasingly charge for repeat attendance. We analyse the event log, identify the devices and times involved, and recommend detector type changes, staff alarm delays or cause-and-effect changes to cut them, in line with BS 5839-1 Section 3.
How do you handle no-access visits on dispersed housing stock?
We give the notice period your contract requires, respond to reschedule requests within two working days, make three attempts with time-stamped door photographs, and hand you the evidence pack for your access procedure. No-access visits are logged in the portal so your compliance percentage is never a surprise.
