Guide
Fire alarm maintenance contract: what to check before you sign
Updated
The annual figure is the least interesting part of a fire alarm maintenance contract. These are the clauses that decide what you actually pay over three years.
Scope: what a visit includes
- How many devices are tested at each visit, and how the rotation covers the whole system over the year.
- Whether panel batteries, standby supplies and cause and effect testing are inside the visit price.
- What is produced at the end: a service report you can file, and any defect list with priorities.
- Whether interfaced systems, door holders, plant shutdowns and lift homing are tested, or explicitly excluded.
The four clauses that move the real cost
- Parts
- Labour-only contracts are common. Ask for the mark-up on parts, the labour rate for a repair visit and what happens when a component is obsolete: replacement of a panel is a capital decision you do not want sprung mid-term.
- Callout and response
- 24 hour cover means nothing without a stated response time, an out of hours labour rate and clarity on whether the first hour is included. Get all three in the proposal.
- Term, renewal and notice
- Multi-year terms with automatic renewal are widespread in this market. Check the notice period for exit and diarise it on the day you sign, because the renewal date is easy to miss.
- Price indexation
- Many contracts allow an annual uplift by an index or a fixed percentage. A cheap year one with an uncapped uplift can be the more expensive contract by year three.
Competence: what to ask for
Article 13 of the Fire Safety Order requires the responsible person to nominate competent persons to implement fire-fighting measures, and defines a competent person as someone with sufficient training and experience or knowledge and other qualities to do so properly (legislation.gov.uk). In practice buyers ask for third party certification of the servicing firm, engineer qualifications, and a sample service report. Third party certification is not a statutory requirement, but it is the most common way a responsible person evidences competence.
Before you sign
- Get the device and panel count the price is based on written into the contract.
- Get the visit frequency and the standard it follows stated in the document, not implied.
- Get the exclusions list. If there is not one, ask for it: a contract with no exclusions clause usually has them elsewhere.
- Get the exit terms and the price review mechanism, then diarise the notice date.
Keep every service report with your fire logbook. Article 17 is about demonstrating a suitable system of maintenance, and the reports are the evidence that the system exists.