1. Our very good friends in the fire service always thought that these things totally failed safe and were nothing less than shocked to find that, notwithstanding their high standards of training in electronic systems, born of years of driving fire engines, in fact they had been totally oblivious to how they worked and universally failed to properly fail safe, as born out by your posts.
2. On the horror of realisation, they, quite rightly, wanted systems to perform as guides from home office and then dtlr and then odpm and then clg ALL, for many years, said they should and always had said so. It was a classic lack of communication between the industry and the enforcers.
3. We laid it on the line that no one had ever in the history of mankind actually paid a blind bit of notice to Government guidance on this subject established over many years, and the trade had got away with it because the enforcers did not take any interest or have any clear understanding of how the circuits actually worked. The fact that people are still happy to flaunt the guidance is evidence of this.
4. Quite rightly, the committee decided that-sorry to repeat myself-it was really not a good idea to trap people in a burning building or allow fire to spread unchecked by open fire doors, simply because of a fault on the fire alarm system.
5. The trade were not only warned of the "change", which was not a change at all, but merely a continuation of what had always been in guides on the FP Act, and were consulted over the issue of I/O units, the difficulties for which we were all not only well aware but disucssed at length. Consultation took the form of one of the largest manufacturers in the land and one of the smallest in the land to get a spread. It was agreed if thats what we wanted the trade would provide it-although contrary to postings one manufacturer already could.
6. Finally, there is clearly a misunderstanding by many regarding the interface between codes of practice and products. To clarify it is the CODES OF PRACTICE that say how things are to perform. Product standards and manufacturers then need to make products that do this. This is a fundamental and long established principle. To say, we should not ask for people not to be trapped in a burning building because people want to use products that will allow this is, frankly, stupid. Its a bit like saying that we cant have legislation that cars should have reduced emissions because cars have high pollutant emission and its all too much bother to design products that meet the requirement.
If you want to know who represented BFPSA, ask FIA. As it happens, both have been personal friends of mine for many years and they are extemely technically competent.
