Difficulties with alarms across multi-tenanted site

[Henniky]

My office block consists of Basement, Ground and 4 upper floors all occupied by a single tenant performing normal office related administration with minimal history of alarm activity.

In addition, at basement level in two wholly separate areas are two restaurant/bars.  The house alarm panel sits within my demise.  The issue is, that being catering establishments, the the number of alarms is high generally as a result of poor practices in the kitchens, etc.  When the alarm is activated all three commercial areas have to be evacuated until Brigade allow reoccupation.  

If alarm goes during working day I end up pushing 250 to 300 office workers onto the streets.  Both restaurants have to do the same with their customers.  Result to them is of course unpaid bills, wasted food and general customer upset.  When it happens in the evening no impact to me but considerable losses for the two catering operations. And this is starting to give them real headaches in terms of lost revenue.

It seems we have to have a shared alarm as each of us are at risk to the others incidents.  Any suggestions as to how we minimise the number of incidents (obviously we strive for good practices) and reduce the losses the caterers are incurring?

We do have a time delay on sounding the alarm after detection which during normal hours gives me the chance to investigate and if need by, reset the panel before the sounders go.  As I dont have 24 hour on-site presence then I cannot apply the same process in the non-core hours.

Any suggestions gratefully received and of course I recognise that the Brigade and insurers will need to have a casting vote....

[Chris Houston]

The obvious solution to me would be to stop doing what ever causes the false alarms and/or make sure you have the appropriate fire detection devises in the area that has the problems.

[Wiz]

Over and above Chri's suggestion;

Would it be possible to add repeat control panels to allow the the other building users aid in the identification and the speedy resolution of unwanted alarms?

Or would it be possible to seperate the systems from each other in some way? This would involve each tenent having his own system but with a link to the other systems. Possibly a delay could be built into the links so that a small time delay is incorporated from the operation of one system signalling another and causing a full evacuation? This proposal might create enough time to manage the 'unwanted alarm' effect a bit better.

I would imagine that the incoporation of seperation and any links and delays would depend on the integrity of fire compartation between systems and, most importantly, the input from proper fire risk assessors and the agreement of all interested parties. You seem to have been allowed a delay on the sounders (I presume this has been agreed) so who knows how flexible the interested parties might be if the risks are properly assessed?

[AnthonyB]

Well if it's poor practice in the kitchens then the restaurants can't complain as the fault is of their own making!

What triggers these alarms- perhaps simply changing the type of detector head in an area will solve the problem. Until we know why these alarms are triggered we can't solve it - the answer after all is to reduce the alarms, not just delay response as one day a 'cry wolf' situation will occur with serious consequences.

Is the system linked to an ARC or is someone always dialling 999 - I'm surprised the FRS isn't stepping in after multiple wasteful attendances.

The alarm service service companies should be involved (if there is actually any maintenance of the restaurant systems that is...) for advice.

I'd bring in enforcement officers from the FRS & Env services as a last resort to inspect and for their input as a lot of the buildings we assess are like yours and we rarely find the problem you describe unless there are general compliance problems in the restaurants - they will provide suitable advice and if anyone is being really bad ensure that they take appropriate steps to resolve it.