I'm sorry, but it seems like a lot of contributers to this thread are making excuses for poor quality service.
If someone without any fire experience or knowledge employes a national accredited expert ( 'competent person' ) to maintain and service something ( at great cost ), they should expect them to be able to, and be professional enough to, identify problems with the system, ( I'm not talking about doing any work for free, just point out the system as problems with it ), I'm meaning, why employ a specialist, if you don't get that service.
Under the RRfsO, contientious business owners are going to think the person they are paying is looking after them, but it is not the case.
Do not say that a owner should get an alarm survey done first , he will not understand that principle. If he/she buys a building, and carries on with the existing service contract that is in place ( and may have been for years ) with an well known accredited company, he will asuume they will tell him if anything is wrong.
This fire safety industry ( in all fire related matters ) needs to get its act together, and become professional, and not duck and dive. Yes you can change contractors, but ( from experience ) there is very little difference in them, and again the employer is having to pay additional costs and having disruption caused by a poor industry.
AFD, no customer can expect the people that they employ to 'guess' what is expected of them.
I have been trying to make the point that the 'service' routines recommended in BS5839 Part 1 do not cover the area of problem that you have mentioned. You can't expect someone you employ for one thing to do anything more than that one thing. That is the legal position.
As a customer, you can, obviously, ask for whatever you want, if you make it part of your purchase contract. But you can't ask someone to just change the oil in a car and then get annoyed that they didn't notice that the piston rings were wearing out!
The original enquiry asked on this thread was if a fire alarm engineer employed to carry out routine servicing would be expected to notice that a piece of equipment was connected/programmed to the incorrect fire zone. This is not a requirement of BS5839 servicing, so if BS5839 servicing is all he was contracted to do, then he can't be held responsible if he didn't notice the fire zoning problem.
The problem would have been noticed if;
a) The system had been properly commissioned.
b) If the 'special' initial inspection in respect of a new service provider was carried out.
The BS5839 servicing provider would have been at fault for not noticing the fire zone problem only if he had been asked to specifically check for such problems in addition to carrying out BS5839 servicing.
Despite all of the above, your last post explains a situation that I, as a customer, would also be very angry about. To take over an existing fire alarm system that has been serviced by the same company for years and to find that it is not in perfect condition would be annoying.
I think the lessons to be learned are;
1) Never buy anything without first getting it fully checked over.
2) Never buy a service without knowing what it includes.
3) Always confirm in writing your expectations are of any service being purchased.
