Guide
Fire alarm servicing cost: how a maintenance quote is built
Updated
Fire alarm maintenance is one of the few compliance purchases sold as an annual figure, which hides most of what you are buying. Here is what sits underneath the number.
What you are buying
A servicing contract buys engineer visits, a proportion of the devices tested at each visit, a report you can put in the fire logbook, and usually some form of callout arrangement. What it does not automatically buy is parts, out of hours attendance or investigation of unwanted alarms. Two contracts with the same headline price can differ on all three.
The seven things that move the price
- Device count. Detectors, call points and sounders. Engineer time tracks this more closely than floor area does.
- Panels. Each panel is its own set of checks, and networked panels add cause and effect testing between buildings.
- Visits per year. The single biggest lever on the annual total.
- System age. Obsolete equipment means scarce spares, longer fault finding and occasionally a firm who will not quote at all.
- Out of hours access. Sounder tests in schools, restaurants and residential blocks often cannot happen during occupied hours.
- False alarm history. Investigating unwanted alarms is diagnostic work, not routine servicing.
- Sites and travel. A small system a long way from the engineer is expensive per device.
Questions that make two quotes comparable
- Ask what device count the price assumes, and what happens on the first visit if the real count is higher.
- Ask for the price per visit alongside the annual figure, so a two-visit contract and a four-visit contract can be compared honestly.
- Ask whether parts are included, and what the firm does when a component is obsolete.
- Ask for the callout response time and the out of hours rate in writing, not the phrase 24/7 support.
- Ask which clause of BS 5839-1 their visit frequency follows, and get the answer in the proposal.
Watch the contract term and the renewal mechanism. Fire alarm maintenance is a market where long auto-renewing terms with indexed price rises are common, and the exit notice period matters as much as year one's price.
What the law fixes
Article 17 of the Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005 requires the responsible person to ensure that fire safety facilities, equipment and devices are subject to a suitable system of maintenance and are maintained in an efficient state, in efficient working order and in good repair (legislation.gov.uk). That is a duty about outcome, not a schedule and not a price. The schedule comes from BS 5839-1 and from your fire risk assessment.